Meddling Future People
by HallowsHorcruxes
Summary: Books! From the future! Our favourite people get one and a bit books from a future girl. How will this affect Harry and his twin sister Taylor? OC(Taylor Potter)/Fleur Delacour, Harry/Tonks.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I own nothing and I added in Taylor Potter because of Copyright.**

_Dear Order, Teens-Who-Aren't-Allowed-In-For-Stupid-Reasons and… well Others,_

_Hi__,__ my name is Kate Beckett and I am from the future, to be specific the year 2014. I have sent you one and a bit books because the war you are currently fighting with Lord Voldemort, well you lost. These books tell you what happened during and after the Third task, sorry Twins, and what they went through in their fifth year. You see, after the Harry and Taylor Potter's fifth year they lost someone incredibly important to them and they couldn't fight the war anymore. Me and the Resistance have been trying to figure out how to send this back in time in hopes that you can stop it._

_I wish I could tell you what has happened to all of you but I'm under strict instructions that you can only know what has happened to the Potter Twins so Harry first._

_Harry, good news you're still alive, you've pulled yourself together and you are leading the resistance, you have a girlfriend (I'm not allowed to say who) and no children, you both say that you want your children to live in a happy world not one under Voldemort's control. You've set up safe houses all over Britain for people who need your help, people fighting against Voldemort, kids who have lost their parents in the war and so many more. You're an idol and children look up to you._

_Taylor, I'm sorry yours isn't as good as your brothers. There is no easy way to say this but I've been told you are strong so I'm just going to come out with it. You, Taylor, are dead. When you were seventeen Voldemort tried to attack Hogwarts, he brought all his Death Eaters along and it was supposed to be the final battle, the battle in which he killed you and your brother, the only two people who could stop him. You stayed behind insuring everyone who opposed Voldemort could escape as there was no prior knowledge to this battle, you and Harry literally found out about it seven minutes before it happened. You took out quite a few Death Eaters out before being caught, apparently your battle lasted half an hour according to the Portraits at Hogwarts and you were spectacular. Voldemort caught you personally and took you to where ever he was staying at the time. You were kept alive and used for fun, the Death Eaters and Voldemort all tortured you but you never broke. They killed you shortly before your twentieth birthday. You died a hero and the amount of times I've heard people say they want to be just like you when they grow up is ridiculous. In fact, you are my hero, well you and your brother._

_I'm sorry I've had to be the bearer of bad news, hopefully this will ensure you take to heart what you read and help fix the future. _

_Lastly, I'm watching. Wow, that sounds creepy. What I meant is that, any questions you have, I can send you a lovely little letter telling you the answer… if I'm allowed to that is._

_Oh! I've got a list here to tell you who should be here, just gotta make sure everyone's where they should be. We can't really afford to mess this up now can we?_

_Sirius Black,_

_Fleur Delacour,_

_Dedalus Diggle,_

_Albus Dumbledore,_

_Arabella Figg,_

_Mundungus Fletcher,_

_Filius Flitwick,_

_Hermione Granger,_

_Rubeus Hagrid,_

_Neville Longbottom,_

_Luna Lovegood,_

_Remus Lupin,_

_Minerva McGonagall,_

_Alastor Moody,_

_Poppy Pomfrey._

_Taylor Potter,_

_Harry Potter,_

_Kingsley Shacklebolt,_

_Severus Snape,_

_Pomona Sprout,_

_Nymphadora Tonks,_

_Arthur Weasley,_

_Molly Weasley,_

_Bill Weasley,_

_Charlie Weasley,_

_Fred or Gred Weasley,_

_George or Feorge Weasley,_

_Ron Weasley,_

_Ginny Weasley._

_You all here? Great. Well… good luck I suppose._

_Yours,_

_Kate Beckett._

"Well," Taylor says breaking the silence had been hanging around since she had read the letter. "Guess I was right guys, I'm not gonna make it through my teenage years."

"How could you say that?!" Ginny, Hermione and Mrs Weasley all shriek.

Taylor shrugs. "Just seemed like an 'I told ya so' was in order. Don't you agree Har?"

Harry shook his head at his twin, trust her to joke about her death. "Always knew you could survive anything Tay, looks like I was right, nearly three years of torture." He whistled.

"How are you both joking about this?" Tonks and Fleur asked both looking like they were about to cry.

"'Cause we've got the books to fix it." The twins answer likes it obvious.

"I shall read first." Dumbledore said looking all one hundred and eight years of his age.

**A/N: This is a reading the books story but with a twist. Harry has a twin and because I'm only doing the end of the fourth book and the fifth book relationships are non-canon! It's an OC(Taylor)/Fleur and Harry/? You tell me in the reviews! I hope you enjoyed this chapter and don't forget to tell me who you want Harry paired up with your choices are;**

**Ginny Weasley**

**Hermione Granger**

**Nymphadora Tonks**

**Oh and I don't have a Beta-Reader so all mistakes are mine, but if you'd like to be mine just tell me in a review or PM me. :)**


	2. Chapter 1

**A/N: Taylor, Harry, Hermione and Ron are known as the favourite four not golden trio.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but Taylor.**

Dumbledore cleared his throat and began to read.

"**Dumbledore reckons You-Know-Who's getting stronger again as well?" Ron whispered.**

"A glimpse into a conversation of our favourite four." Fred joked.

"Most people talk about; exams, girls, boys, friends, homework, Hogsmede weekends etc. and you four talk about bloody You-Know-Who!" George continued in an exasperated tone.

**Everything the twins had seen in the Pensieve, nearly everything Dumbledore had told and shown them afterward, they had now shared with Ron and Hermione**

"Obviously." Hermione, Taylor, Harry and Ron said together.

**- and, of course, with Sirius, to whom Harry had sent an owl the moment the twins had left Dumbledore's office. Harry, Taylor, Ron, and Hermione sat up late in the common room once again that night, talking it all over until the twins minds were reeling, until they understood what Dumbledore had meant about a head becoming so full of thoughts that it would have been a relief to siphon them off.**

"Maybe you should invest in a Pensieve." Dumbledore interrupted himself.

**Ron stared into the common room fire. Taylor thought she saw Ron shiver slightly, even though the evening was warm.**

"Too bloody observant." Ron mumbled fixing Taylor with a faux glare.

**"And he trusts Snape?" Ron said. "He really trusts Snape, even though he knows he was a Death Eater?"**

"He really is a Death Eater?!" The W twins yelled shocked.

"Was. He saw the error of his ways and came back to the light." Dumbledore told them calmly.

**"Yes," said Harry.**

**Hermione had not spoken for ten minutes. She was sitting with her forehead in her hands, staring at her knees. Harry thought she too looked as though she could have done with a Pensieve.**

**"Rita Skeeter," she muttered finally.**

"What does she have to do with it?" Ginny asked.

"You'll see." Hermione replied with a knowing grin.

**"How can you be worrying about her now?" said Ron, in utter disbelief.**

**"I'm not worrying about her," Hermione said to her knees. "I'm just thinking. . . remember what she said to me in the Three Broomsticks? 'I know things about Ludo Bagman that would make your hair curl. ' This is what she meant, isn't it? She reported his trial, she knew he'd passed information to the Death Eaters. And Winky too, remember . . .'Ludo Bagman's a bad wizard.' Mr. Crouch would have been furious he got off, he would have talked about it at home."**

**"Yeah, but Bagman didn't pass information on purpose, did he?"**

**Hermione shrugged.**

**"And Fudge reckons Madame Maxime attacked Crouch?" Ron said, turning back to twins.**

**"Yeah," said Harry, "but he's only saying that because Crouch disappeared near the Beauxbatons carriage."**

"And he's an arse!" Taylor spat.

**"We never thought of her, did we?" said Ron slowly. "Mind you, she's definitely got giant blood, and she doesn't want to admit it-"**

**"Of course she doesn't," said Hermione sharply, looking up. **

**"Look what happened to Hagrid when Rita found out about his mother. Look at Fudge, jumping to conclusions about her, just because she's part giant. Who needs that sort of prejudice? I'd probably say I had big bones if I knew that's what I'd get for telling the truth." Taylor said disgusted at the obvious racism.**

"Fudge has a death wish." George said.

"I agree uglier twin of mine."

"Why would you think that?" Hermione asked confused.

"He's pissed off dear Taylor."

"And anyone who pisses of dear Taylor."

"Must have a death wish!" The twins finished together, ignoring the glare they were getting from 'dear Taylor'.

**Hermione looked at her watch. "We haven't done any practicing!" she said, looking shocked. "We were going to do the Impediment Curse! We'll have to really get down to it tomorrow! Come on. Harry, Taylor, you both need to get some sleep."**

"Yes mum." The twins said smiling their Potter smiles at Hermione.

**Harry and Ron went slowly upstairs to their dormitory and Taylor and Hermione went to theirs. As the twins pulled on their pajamas, Harry looked over at Neville's bed. True to their word to Dumbledore, they had not told Ron and Hermione about Neville's parents.**

Neville stiffened. "You- you know?"

"Nev, we're so sorry." Taylor said.

"Everyone- everyone's going to know now. Aren't they?"

Harry nodded. "We are so sorry." Neville just nodded at him, his eyes looking but not seeing the wall ahead.

**As Harry took off his glasses and climbed into his four-poster, he and Taylor thought about the same thing they imagined how it must feel to have parents still living but unable to recognize you. They often got sympathy from strangers for being an orphan, but as Harry listened to Neville's snores, they both thought that Neville deserved it more than they did.**

"No." Neville interrupted. "My parents are still alive, I live with my Gran who loves me and the rest of my family love me. You two only have each other."

"That's the thing Nev." Taylor started.

"We don't need sympathy," Harry continued.

"We have each other."

**Lying in the darkness, the twins felt a rush of anger and hate toward the people who had tortured Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom. . . They remembered the jeers of the crowd as Crouch's son and his companions had been dragged from the court by the dementors. ... They understood how they had felt. . . . Then they remembered the milk-white face of the screaming boy and realized with a jolt that he had died a year later. . . It was Voldemort, the twins thought, staring up at the canopy of their separate beds in the darkness, it all came back to Voldemort. . . He was the one who had torn these families apart, who had ruined all these lives. . .**

"It didn't say." Neville whispered relieved and all though the children in the room wanted to know what had happened to their friends parents they respected him enough to not ask. If he wants them to know he'll tell them.

**Ron and Hermione were supposed to be studying for their exams, which would finish on the day of the third task, but they were putting most of their efforts into helping Harry and Taylor prepare.**

"You really should have revised." Harry told them.

"Hey! We both aced Defence." Ron smiled at his best friend.

**"Don't worry about it," Hermione said shortly when Harry pointed this out to them and said they didn't mind practicing on their own for a while, "at least we'll get top marks in Defence Against the Dark Arts. We'd never have found out about all these hexes in class."**

**"Good training for when we're all Aurors," said Ron excitedly,**

Mrs Weasley went pale. Of course they wanted to go into a dangerous job.

"You want to be Aurors." Moody said gruffly. Ron, Taylor and Harry nodded. Moody looked at them and nodded to himself, his magical eye was on Kingsley.

"If any of the stories we've heard about you are true, you'd all be fine Aurors." Kingsley spoke in his soothing voice.

**attempting the Impediment Curse on a wasp that had buzzed into the room and making it stop dead in midair.**

"Good aim." Tonks smiled.

**The mood in the castle as they entered June became excited and tense again. Everyone was looking forward to the third task, which would take place a week before the end of term.**

**The twins were practicing hexes at every available moment. They felt more confident about this task than either of the others. Difficult and dangerous though it would undoubtedly be, Moody was right: they had managed to find their way past monstrous creatures and enchanted barriers before now, and this time they had some notice, some chance to prepare themselves for what lay ahead.**

"Nothing could've prepared us for what we were about to face." Harry said looking at the floor.

**Tired of walking in on Harry, Taylor, Hermione, and Ron all over the school. Professor McGonagall had given them permission to use the empty Transfiguration classroom at lunchtimes.**

McGonagall looked at the favourite four. "I was and still am very impressed with what I saw you four doing. If I didn't think I would've been distracting I would've watched you practice." She then gave the four friends one of her rare smiles.

**The twins had soon mastered the Impediment Curse, a spell to slow down and obstruct attackers; the Reductor Curse (A spell that Taylor seemed very good at),**

"Of course." Ron snorted.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Taylor asked raising one eyebrow at him.

Ron spluttered and turned as red as his hair, whilst his siblings laughed at him. "Nothing." He managed to get out.

**which would enable them to blast solid objects out of their way; and the Four-Point Spell, a useful discovery of Hermione's that would make their wand point due north, therefore enabling them to check whether they were going in the right direction within the maze. Harry was still having trouble with the Shield Charm, though. This was supposed to cast a temporary, invisible wall around himself that deflected minor curses; Hermione managed to shatter it with a well-placed Jelly-Legs Jinx, and Harry wobbled around the room for ten minutes afterward before she had looked up the counter-jinx.**

"She knew it." Taylor said.

"What?!" Harry asked his jaw dropping.

"So did you." Hermione said throwing Taylor under the bus too.

"Yeah, but no one asked me. And it was funny to see him wobbling around the room." She shrugged not fazed by her brothers glare.

**Taylor on the other hand had moved on and was perfecting her Bombarda Curse and Expulso Curse. The Bombarda used to provoke small explosions and the Expluso Curse used to produced immense explosions, blasting the target apart with a bust of blue light; it had enough force to throw people into walls.**

"Spells to inflict damage." Fred said.

"That's kinda what I meant," Ron spoke. "Scary spells for a scary girl." Taylor shrugged, she knew she was intimidating, she grew up that way. Trying to scare Vernon so he wouldn't beat her or Harry, it didn't work but she at least made sure Harry got less beatings.

**"You're still doing really well, though," Hermione said encouragingly, looking down her list and crossing off those spells they had already learned. "Some of these are bound to come in handy."**

"They did." The twins told her.

**"Come and look at this," said Ron, who was standing by the window. He was staring down onto the grounds. "What's Malfoy doing?"**

"Being a git?" Ginny asked.

**The twins and Hermione went to see. Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle were standing in the shadow of a tree below. Crabbe and Goyle seemed to be keeping a lookout; both were smirking. Malfoy was holding his hand up to his mouth and speaking into it.**

**"He looks like he's using a walkie-talkie," said Harry curiously.**

**He can't be," said Taylor.**

"**Taylor and I have told you before, those sorts of things don't work around Hogwarts.**

"The know-it-all's of Gryffindor house." The W twins smiled at them. "Without you two many a people would've handed in wrong homework."

**Come on you two," Hermione added briskly, turning away from the window and moving back into the middle of the room, "let's try that Shield Charm again Harry, Taylor you should work on the cutting curse. That'll probably come in handy."**

"How come Taylor always seems to do spells meant for attacking?" Bill asked.

"I'm better at Defensive spells." Harry said.

"And whilst my defensive spells are okay, I don't mind attacking and having to hurt people if I've got too. Harry won't he doesn't like having to hurt people, even if it's necessary." Taylor continued.

**Sirius was sending daily owls now. Like Hermione, he seemed to want to concentrate on getting the twins through the last task before they concerned themselves with anything else. He reminded them in every letter that whatever might be going on outside the walls of Hogwarts was not their responsibility, nor was it within their power to influence it.**

**If Voldemort is really getting stronger again, he wrote, my priority is to ensure both of your safeties. He cannot hope to lay hands on you while you are under Dumbledore's protection, but all the same, take no risks: Concentrate on getting through that maze safely, and then we can turn our attention to other matters.**

"We got through the maze okay." Taylor mumbled, and Fleur who was sat next to her took her hand and squeezed it.

**The twins nerves mounted as June the twenty-fourth drew closer, but they were not as bad as those they had felt before the first and second tasks. For one thing, they were confident that, this time, they had done everything in their power to prepare for the task. For another, this was the final hurdle, and however well or badly they did, the tournament would at last be over, which would be an enormous relief.**

Harry snorted at that.

**Breakfast was a very noisy affair at the Gryffindor table on the morning of the third task. The post owls appeared, bringing the twins a good-luck card from Sirius. It was only a piece of parchment, folded over and bearing a muddy paw print on its front, but they appreciated it all the same.**

"I didn't know what to write." Sirius mumbled.

"That was better than anything you could've written." Taylor told him.

**A screech owl arrived for Hermione, carrying her morning copy of the Daily Prophet as usual. She unfolded the paper, glanced at the front page, and spat out a mouthful of pumpkin juice all over it.**

"I noticed that." Neville, Ginny, Fred and George all said.

**"What?" said Harry, Taylor and Ron together, staring at her. **

"You lot speak together too much." Sirius said.

"It's like your all one person."

The four friends shrugged. "We don't mean to." They said, causing half of the room to laugh.

**"Nothing," said Hermione quickly, trying to shove the paper out of sight, but Ron grabbed it. **

**He stared at the headline and said, "No way. Not today. That old cow."**

**"What?" said Harry. **

**"Rita Skeeter again?" Asked Taylor.**

**"No," said Ron, and just like Hermione, he attempted to push the paper out of sight.**

**"It's about us, isn't it?" said Harry.**

"When isn't it." Harry sighed.

**"No," said Ron, in an entirely unconvincing tone. But before the twins could demand to see the paper. Draco Malfoy shouted across the Great Hall from the Slytherin table.**

**"Hey, Potters! Potters! How's your heads? You feeling all right? Sure you're not going to go berserk on us?" Malfoy was holding a copy of the Daily Prophet too. Slytherins up and down the table were sniggering, twisting in their seats to see the twins reaction.**

"Idiots." Taylor sighed.

**"Let us see it," Taylor said to Ron. **

**"Give it here." Harry added.**

**Very reluctantly, Ron handed over the newspaper. Harry turned it over and the twins found themselves staring at their own pictures, beneath the banner headline:**

**"HARRY AND TAYLOR POTTER DISTURBED AND DANGEROUS"**

"Only dangerous if you try to kill us." Harry muttered.

**The twins that defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named are unstable and possibly dangerous, writes Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent. Alarming evidence has recently come to light about the Potter's strange behavior, which casts doubts upon their suitability to compete in a demanding competition like the Triwizard Tournament, or even to attend Hogwarts School. The Potter's, the Daily Prophet can exclusively reveal, regularly collapses at school, and are often heard to complain of pain in the scars on their foreheads (relic of the curse with which You-Know-Who attempted to kill them). On Monday last, midway through a Divination lesson, your Daily Prophet reporter witnessed the Potter's storming from the class, claiming that their scars were hurting too badly to continue studying.**

**It is possible, say top experts at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, that the Potter twins brains were affected by the attack inflicted upon them by You-Know-Who, and that their insistence that the scar is still hurting is an expression of their deep-seated confusion.**

**"They might even be pretending," said one specialist. "This could be a plea for attention."**

**The Daily Prophet, however, has unearthed worrying facts about Harry and Taylor Potter that Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, has carefully concealed from the wizarding public.**

**"The twins can speak Parseltongue," reveals Draco Malfoy, a Hogwarts fourth year. "There were a lot of attacks on students a couple of years ago, and most people thought they were behind them after they saw them lose their temper at a dueling club and set a snake on another student. It was all hushed up, though. But they've made friends with werewolves and giants too. We think they'd do anything for a bit of power."**

**Parseltongue, the ability to converse with snakes, has long been considered a Dark Art. Indeed, the most famous Parselmouth of our times is none other than You-Know-Who himself. A member of the Dark Force Defense League, who wished to remain unnamed, stated that he would regard any wizard who could speak Parseltongue as worthy of investigation. "Personally, I would be highly suspicious of anybody who could converse with snakes, as serpents are often used in the worst kinds of Dark Magic, and are historically associated with evildoers." Similarly, anyone who seeks out the company of such vicious creatures as werewolves and giants would appear to have a fondness for violence."**

**Albus Dumbledore should surely consider whether a boy and girl such as this should be allowed to compete in the Triwizard Tournament. Some fear that the Potter's might resort to the Dark Arts in their desperation to win the tournament, the third task of which takes place this evening.**

**"Gone off us a bit, hasn't she?" said Taylor lightly, as Harry folded up the paper.**

"How are you so calm after reading that?" Fleur asked Taylor. "I was furious." **(A/N: I can't do the accent for Fleur so I'm not even going to bother. Sorry.)**

**Over at the Slytherin table, Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle were laughing at them, tapping their heads with their fingers, pulling grotesquely mad faces, and waggling their tongues like snakes.**

"Snakes don't waggle their tongues like they did." Luna said serenely.

**"How did she know your scar hurt in Divination?" Ron said. "There's no way she was there, there's no way she could've heard -"**

**"The window was open," said Harry. "I opened it to breathe."**

**"You were at the top of North Tower!" Hermione said. "Your voice couldn't have carried all the way down to the grounds!"**

**"Well, you're the one who's supposed to be researching magical methods of bugging!" said Harry. "You tell me how she did it!"**

"What happened to focusing on the third task?" Tonks asked. "That's what you should be worried about not Skeeter." She spat out the name as if it was something vile leaving a horrid taste in her mouth.

**"I've been trying!" said Hermione. "But I... but. . ." An odd, dreamy expression suddenly came over Hermione's face. She slowly raised a hand and ran her fingers through her hair.**

**"Are you all right?" said Ron, frowning at her.**

**"Yes," said Hermione breathlessly. She ran her fingers through her hair again, and then held her hand up to her mouth, as though speaking into an invisible walkie-talkie. Harry, Taylor and Ron stared at each other.**

"She's had a brainstorm." Charlie said.

**"I've had an idea," Hermione said, gazing into space. "I think I know. . . because then no one would be able to see ... even Moody. . . and she'd have been able to get onto the window ledge . . . but she's not allowed . . . she's definitely not allowed ... I think we've got her! Just give me two seconds in the library - just to make sure!" With that, Hermione seized her school bag and dashed out of the Great Hall.**

**"Oi!" Ron called after her. "We've got our History of Magic exam in ten minutes! Blimey," he said, turning back to the twins, "she must really hate that Skeeter woman to risk missing the start of an exam. What're you going to do in Binns's class - read again?"**

**Exempt from the end-of-term tests as a Triwizard champion, the twins had been sitting in the back of every exam class so far, looking up fresh hexes for the third task.**

"Good thing to do." Kingsley said.

**"S'pose so," Harry said to Ron; but just then. Professor McGonagall came walking alongside the Gryffindor table toward them.**

**"Potter's, the champions are congregating in the chamber off the Hall after breakfast," she said.**

**"But the task's not till tonight!" said Harry, accidentally spilling scrambled eggs down his front, afraid he had mistaken the time. Taylor rolled her eyes at her brother before returning her attention to her head of house.**

People laughed at the twins antics.

**"I'm aware of that, Potter," she said. "The champions' families are invited to watch the final task, you know. This is simply a chance for you to greet them."**

**She moved away. Harry and Taylor gaped after her.**

**"She doesn't expect the Dursleys to turn up, does she?" Harry asked Ron blankly.**

"If you told them there is more than a fifty percent chance we'll die then they would've come." Taylor said in a bored voice.

**"Dunno," said Ron. "Harry, Taylor, I'd better hurry, I'm going to be late for Binns. See you later."**

**Harry finished his breakfast in the emptying Great Hall and Taylor patiently waited for him.**

"You didn't eat breakfast?" Mrs Weasley asked horrified.

"I did. I had a pear and an apple. Like I usually have."

**They saw Fleur Delacour get up from the Ravenclaw table and join Cedric as he crossed to the side chamber and entered.**

**Krum slouched off to join them shortly afterward. The twins stayed where they were. They really didn't want to go into the chamber. They had no family - no family who would turn up to see them risk their lives, anyway. But just as they were getting up, thinking that they might as well go up to the library and do a spot more hex research, the door of the side chamber opened, and Cedric stuck his head out.**

**"Taylor, Harry, come on, they're waiting for you both!"**

"We were so confused." Harry moaned.

**Utterly perplexed. The twins got up. The Dursleys couldn't possibly be here, could they?**

"Not bloody likely." Ron muttered.

**They walked across the Hall and opened the door into the chamber.**

**Cedric and his parents were just inside the door. Viktor Krum was over in a corner, conversing with his dark-haired mother and father in rapid Bulgarian. He had inherited his fathers hooked nose. On the other side of the room, Fleur was jabbering away in French to her mother. Fleur's little sister, Gabrielle, was holding her mother's hand.**

**She waved at Harry and Taylor, who waved back, grinning. Then they saw Mrs. Weasley and Bill standing in front of the fireplace, beaming at him.**

"You didn't think we'd miss it did you?" Mrs Weasley smiled at the two Potters she thought of as her own kids.

**"Surprise!" Mrs. Weasley said excitedly as they smiled broadly and walked over to them. "Thought we'd come and watch you. Harry, Taylor!" She bent down and kissed him on the cheek, repeating the same action with Taylor.**

**"You all right?" said Bill, grinning at Harry and shaking his hand, then hugging Taylor. "Charlie wanted to come, but he couldn't get time off. He said you were incredible against the Horntail. And you agasint the Ironbelly Taylor!"**

"Thanks Charlie." The twins said.

**"This is really nice of you," Harry muttered to Mrs. Weasley. **

**"We thought for a moment -the Dursleys -" Taylor continued.**

**"Hmm," said Mrs. Weasley, pursing her lips. She had always refrained from criticizing the Dursleys in front of the twins, but her eyes flashed every time they were mentioned.**

"You both really are observant." Mrs Weasley smiled at them.

**"It's great being back here," said Bill, looking around the chamber (Violet, the Fat Lady's friend, winked at him from her frame). "Haven't seen this place for five years. Is that picture of the mad knight still around? Sir Cadogan?"**

"Ugh him." The Gryffindors moaned.

**"Oh yeah," said the twins, who had met Sir Cadogan the previous year.**

**"And the Fat Lady?" said Bill.**

**"She was here in my time," said Mrs. Weasley. "She gave me such a telling off one night when I got back to the dormitory at four in the morning -"**

"What?!" The Weasley children all exclaimed.

**"What were you doing out of your dormitory at four in the morning?" said Bill, surveying his mother with amazement.**

**Mrs. Weasley grinned, her eyes twinkling.**

**"Your father and I had been for a night time stroll," she said. "He got caught by Apollyon Pringle - he was the caretaker in those days - your father's still got the marks."**

"I do." Mr Weasley sighed.

**"Fancy giving us a tour, you two?" said Bill.**

**"Yeah, okay," said Harry, and they made their way back toward the door into the Great Hall. As they passed Amos Diggory, he looked around.**

**"There you are, are you?" he said, looking Harry and Taylor up and down. "Bet you're not feeling quite as full of yourselves now Cedrics caught you both up on points, are you?"**

"What?!" Sirius shouted.

**"What?" said the twins.**

**"Ignore him," said Cedric in a low voice to the twins, frowning after his father. "He's been angry ever since Rita Skeeters article about the Triwizard Tournament - you know, when she made out you two were the only Hogwarts champion."**

**"Didn't bother to correct her, though, did they?" said Amos Diggory, loudly enough for the twins to hear as he started to walk out of the door with Mrs. Weasley and Bill. "Still, . . you'll show them, Ced. Beaten him once before, haven't you?"**

The twins stiffened guilt coursing through their bodies. How could they have been so stupid? How could they have let him die?

**"Rita Skeeter goes out of her way to cause trouble, Amos!" Mrs. Weasley said angrily. "I would have thought you'd know that, working at the Ministry!"**

**Mr. Diggory looked as though he was going to say something angry, but his wife laid a hand on his arm, and he merely shrugged and turned away.**

**The twins had a very enjoyable morning walking over the sunny grounds with Bill and Mrs. Weasley, showing them the Beauxbatons carriage and the Durmstrang ship. Mrs. Weasley was intrigued by the Whomping Willow, which had been planted after she had left school, and reminisced at length about the gamekeeper before Hagrid, a man called Ogg.**

**"How's Percy?" Harry asked as they walked around the greenhouses.**

The Weasley family all stiffened at the mention of their estranged brother. Mrs Weasley looked like she was going to cry.

**"Not good," said Bill.**

**"He's very upset," said Mrs. Weasley, lowering her voice and glancing around. "The Ministry wants to keep Mr. Crouch's disappearance quiet, but Percy's been hauled in for questioning about the instructions Mr. Crouch has been sending in. They seem to think there's a chance they weren't genuinely written by him. Percy's been under a lot of strain. They're not letting him fill in for Mr. Crouch as the fifth judge tonight. Cornelius Fudge is going to be doing it."**

**They returned to the castle for lunch.**

**"Mum - Bill!" said Ron, looking stunned, as he joined the Gryffindor table. "What're you doing here?"**

**"Come to watch Taylor and Harry in the last task!" said Mrs. Weasley brightly. "I must say, it makes a lovely change, not having to cook. How was your exam?"**

**"Oh . . . okay," said Ron. "Couldn't remember all the goblin rebels' names, so I invented a few. It's all right," he said, helping himself to a Cornish pasty, while Mrs. Weasley looked stern, "they're all called stuff like Bodrod the Bearded and Urg the Unclean; it wasn't hard."**

"You're mental." Charlie said.

"I can't believe you said that." Ginny gaped.

"To mum." The W twins said shocked.

**Fred, George, and Ginny came to sit next to them too, and the twins were having such a good time they felt almost as though they were back at the Burrow; they had forgotten to worry about that evening's task, and not until Hermione turned up, halfway through lunch, did they remember that she had had a brainwave about Rita Skeeter.**

"We're gonna find out." Ginny sang.

**"Are you going to tell us - ?" Taylor started, Hermione shook her head warningly and glanced at Mrs. Weasley.**

**"Hello, Hermione," said Mrs. Weasley, much more stiffly than usual.**

**"Hello," said Hermione, her smile faltering at the cold expression on Mrs. Weasley's face.**

**Harry looked between them, then said, "Mrs. Weasley, you didn't believe that rubbish Rita Skeeter wrote in Witch Weekly, did you? Because Hermione's not my girlfriend."**

**"Oh!" said Mrs. Weasley "No - of course I didn't!" But she became considerably warmer toward Hermione after that.**

"Convincing mum." Charlie said.

**The twins, Bill, and Mrs. Weasley whiled away the afternoon with a long walk around the castle, and then returned to the Great Hall for the evening feast. Ludo Bagman and Cornelius Fudge had joined the staff table now. Bagman looked quite cheerful, but Cornelius Fudge, who was sitting next to Madame Maxime, looked stern and was not talking.**

**Madame Maxime was concentrating on her plate, and the twins thought her eyes looked red.**

"How did you notice that?" Fleur asked. "I was closer to her than you and I did not see that."

The twins shrugged, they'd always been observant it just came naturally to them.

**Hagrid kept glancing along the table at her, There were more courses than usual, but Harry, who was starting to feel really nervous now, didn't eat much. Taylor who never ate much anyway ate a considerable amount less and her nerves hit her like a freight train.**

Mrs Weasley looked at Taylor, now she thought about it Taylor never did eat much. Just enough so that she wasn't hungry. Just enough so she wouldn't be too hungry.

**As the enchanted ceiling overhead began to fade from blue to a dusky purple, Dumbledore rose to his feet at the staff table, and silence fell.**

**"Ladies and gentlemen, in five minutes' time, I will be asking you to make your way down to the Quidditch field for the third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament. Will the champions please follow Mr. Bagman down to the stadium now."**

**The twins got up. The Gryffindors all along the table were applauding them; the Weasleys and Hermione all wished them good luck, and they headed off out of the Great Hall with Cedric, Fleur, and Viktor.**

**"Feeling all right. Harry, Taylor?" Bagman asked as they went down the stone steps onto the grounds. "Confident?"**

**"We're okay," said the twins. It was sort of true; they were nervous, but they kept running over all the hexes and spells they had been practicing in their minds as they walked, and the knowledge that they could remember them all made them feel better. Also the fact that they'd promised to stick together in the maze was keeping them relatively calm.**

"It's a good job we stuck together." Harry whispered to his twin who nodded.

**They walked onto the Quidditch field, which was now completely unrecognizable. A twenty-foot-high hedge ran all the way around the edge of it. There was a gap right in front of them: the entrance to the vast maze. The passage beyond it looked dark and creepy.**

**Five minutes later, the stands had begun to fill; the air was full of excited voices and the rumbling of feet as the hundreds of students filed into their seats. The sky was a deep, clear blue now, and the first stars were starting to appear. Hagrid, Professor Moody, Professor McGonagall, and Professor Flitwick came walking into the stadium and approached Bagman and the champions. They were wearing large, red, luminous stars on their hats, all except Hagrid, who had his on the back of his moleskin vest.**

**"We are going to be patrolling the outside of the maze," said Professor McGonagall to the champions. "If you get into difficulty, and wish to be rescued, send red sparks into the air, and one of us will come and get you, do you understand?"**

"Should've red sparked it." Harry mumbled.

**The champions nodded.**

**"Off you go, then!" said Bagman brightly to the four patrollers.**

**"Good luck. Harry, Taylor," Hagrid whispered, and the five of them walked away in different directions, to station themselves around the maze. Bagman now pointed his wand at his throat, muttered, "Sonorus," and his magically magnified voice echoed into the stands.**

**"Ladies and gentlemen, the third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament is about to begin! Let me remind you how the points currently stand! Tied in first place, with eighty-five points each - Mr. Cedric Diggory, Mr. Harry Potter and Miss. Taylor Potter, all three of them from Hogwarts School!" **

The gathered people cheered.

**The cheers and applause sent birds from the Forbidden Forest fluttering into the darkening sky. "In second place, with eighty points - Mr. Viktor Krum, of Durmstrang Institute!" More applause. "And in third place - Miss Fleur Delacour, of Beauxbatons Academy!"**

They cheered again.

**Taylor could just make out Mrs. Weasley, Bill, Ron, and Hermione applauding Fleur politely, halfway up the stands. She waved up at them nudging Harry and pointing them out so he could wave too, they waved back, beaming at them.**

"That helped the nerves." Harry told them.

**"So ... on my whistle, Harry, Taylor and Cedric!" said Bagman. "Three - two - one -" He gave a short blast on his whistle, and Taylor, Harry and Cedric hurried forward into the maze.**

**The towering hedges cast black shadows across the path, and, whether because they were so tall and thick or because they had been enchanted, the sound of the surrounding crowd was silenced the moment they entered the maze. The twins felt almost as though they were underwater again. **

"It was horrible in there."

**They pulled out their wands, muttered, "Lumos," and heard Cedric do the same just behind them.**

**After about fifty yards, they reached a fork. They looked at each other.**

**"See you," Harry said, and the twins took the left one, while Cedric took the right.**

**The twins heard Bagman's whistle for the second time. Krum had entered the maze. The twins sped up. The path Harry had chosen for them seemed completely deserted. They turned right, and hurried on, holding their wands high over their heads, trying to see as far ahead as possible. Still, there was nothing in sight.**

**Bagman's whistle blew in the distance for the third time. All of the champions were now inside.**

**Taylor kept looking behind them. The old feeling that they were being watched was upon her.**

"Then you were." Ron and Hermione said seriously.

**The maze was growing darker with every passing minute as the sky overhead deepened to navy. They reached a second fork.**

"**Point Me," Taylor whispered to her wand, holding it flat in her palm.**

"Told you that spell came in handy." Taylor smiled at her friend.

**The wand spun around once and pointed toward their right, into solid hedge. That way was north, and they knew that they needed to go northwest for the centre of the maze. The best they could do was to take the left fork and go right again as soon as possible.**

**The path ahead was empty too, and when they reached a right turn and took it, they again found their way unblocked. The twins didn't know why, but the lack of obstacles was unnerving them. Surely they should have met something by now? It felt as though the maze were luring them into a false sense of security,**

"Or Death Eater scum was clearing the path ways for us." Taylor said.

**which wasn't working, if anything it was putting Taylor more on edge.**

"Good girl." Moody told her gruffly.

**Then they heard movement right behind them. Harry held out his wand, ready to attack, as Taylor tightened her grip discreetly pointing her wand in that direction,**

"You two make a great team." Kingsley told them smiling.

**but their beams fell only upon Cedric, who had just hurried out of a path on the right-hand side. Cedric looked severely shaken. The sleeve of his robe was smoking.**

**"Hagrid's Blast-Ended Skrewts!" he hissed. "They're enormous - I only just got away!" He shook his head and dived out of sight, along another path. Keen to put plenty of distance between himself and the skrewts, The twins hurried off again. Then, as they turned a corner, they saw ... a dementor gliding toward them.**

The people in the room all went pale. A dementor.

**Twelve feet tall, its face hidden by its hood, its rotting, scabbed hands outstretched, it advanced, sensing its way blindly toward them. Taylor and Harry could hear its rattling breath; they felt clammy coldness stealing over them, but knew what they had to do...**

**They summoned the happiest thoughts they could, concentrated with all their might on the thought of getting out of the maze and celebrating with Ron and Hermione,**

"You thought of us?" Ron and Hermione asked.

"Usually do." The twins mumbled.

**raised their wands, and cried, "Expecto Patronum!"**

**A silver stag erupted from the end of Harry's wand**

"Prongs." Sirius mumbled.

**and a graceful unicorn from Taylors**

"You're patroni are very majestic." Lupin told them.

**and they galloped towards the dementor, which fell back and tripped over the hem of its robes. . . the twins had never seen a dementor stumble.**

"Cause they don't."

**"Hang on!" he shouted, advancing in the wake of the twins silver Patronus, "You're a boggart!"**

"**Riddikulus!" Taylor cried.**

"God you two don't even panic when your worst fear shows up." Tonks gaped.

**There was a loud crack, and the shape-shifter exploded in a wisp of smoke. The silver stag and unicorn faded from sight. The twins wished they could have stayed, they could have used the comfort they brought . . . but they moved on, quickly and quietly as possible, listening hard, eyes wide looking everywhere, their wands held high once more.**

**Left ... right... left again . . . Twice they found themselves facing dead ends. Harry did the Four-Point Spell and found that they were going too far east. They turned back, took a right turn, and saw an odd golden mist floating ahead of them.**

"CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" Moody cried making people jump and the twins pull their wands out pointing them at him. Sighing when they realised there was no danger they sat back down tucking their wands away.

**Harry and Taylor approached it cautiously, pointing their wand's beams at it. This looked like some kind of enchantment. They wondered whether they might be able to blast it out of the way.**

**"Reducto!" he said. The spell shot straight through the mist, leaving it intact. He supposed he should have known better; the Reductor Curse was for solid objects.**

"**Bombarda Maxima." Taylor muttered knowing it wouldn't work.**

"Why do it then?" Neville asked.

"Gotta try everything." She shrugged.

**What would happen if they walked through the mist? Was it worth chancing it, or should they double back?**

**They were still hesitating when a scream shattered the silence.**

**"Fleur?" Taylor yelled before making a dash towards the mist only to have Harry grab hold of her.**

"You came to help me?" Fleur asked quietly.

"You're competing against each other and you still run off to help your opposition?" Sirius asked. "Bloody noble."

**There was silence. The twins stared all around them. What had happened to her? Her scream seemed to have come from somewhere ahead. Taylor shook Harry off and ran through the enchanted mist. Harry having no choice but to follow her.**

"Sorry Harry." Taylor mumbled.

"You ran through unknown mist to help me?" Fleur asked.

Taylor shrugged then nodded. "Part of being us I guess, we run off and do stupid stuff to help our friends."

**The world turned upside down. The twins were hanging from the ground, with their hair on end, Harry's glasses dangling off his nose, threatening to fall into the bottomless sky. He clutched them to the end of his nose and they hung there, terrified. It felt as though their feet were glued to the grass, which had now become the ceiling. Below them the dark, star-spangled heavens stretched endlessly. They felt as though if they tried to move one of their feet, they would fall away from the earth completely.**

"What?!" Ron shouted.

**Think, Taylor told herself, as all the blood rushed to her head, think. . . But not one of the spells she or Harry had practiced had been designed to combat a sudden reversal of ground and sky.**

"I don't know any spell that would help." Hermione said shocked.

**Did they dare move their feet? Taylor could hear the blood pounding in her ears. They had two choices - try and move, or send up red sparks, and get rescued and disqualified from the task. But, Fleur was hurt and until they knew she was okay, quitting was not an option.**

"True Gryffindors." Taylor and Harry blushed.

**They shut their eyes, so they wouldn't be able to see the view of endless space below them, and pulled their right feet as hard as they could away from the grassy ceiling.**

**Immediately, the world righted itself. Harry and Taylor fell forward onto their knees onto the wonderfully solid ground. They felt temporarily limp with shock. The twins took a deep, steadying breath, then got up again and hurried forward, Harry looking back over his shoulder as they ran away from the golden mist, which twinkled innocently at him in the moonlight.**

"Innocent my arse."

**They paused at a junction of two paths and frantically looked around for some sign of Fleur. They were sure it had been she who had screamed. What had she met? Was she all right? There was no sign of red sparks - did that mean she had got herself out of trouble, or was she in such trouble that she couldn't reach her wand?**

"I was stunned, I got out safely do not worry." Fleur reassured.

**They took the right fork with a feeling of increasing unease . . . but at the same time, Harry couldn't help thinking. One champion down. . . he knew if he told Taylor that she'd hit him.**

In fact Taylor did just that, walloped him quite hard on the head and glared at him.

"Sorry Fleur." He mumbled rubbing his now sore head.

**The cup was somewhere close by, and it sounded as though Fleur was no longer in the running. He and Taylor had gotten this far, hadn't they? What if they actually managed to win? Fleetingly, and for the first time since he'd found himself champion, he saw again that image of him and Taylor, raising the Triwizard Cup in front of the rest of the school. . .**

"Did you not Taylor?" Tonks asked.

"I could've cared less about winning. I just wanted us to make it through the task with preferably the fewest amount of injuries possible."

**They met nothing for ten minutes, but kept running into dead ends. Twice they took the same wrong turning. Finally, they found a new route and started to jog along it, their wandlight waving, making their shadows flicker and distort on the hedge walls. Then they rounded another corner and found themselves facing a Blast-Ended Skrewt.**

**Cedric was right - it was enormous. Ten feet long, it looked more like a giant scorpion than anything. Its long sting was curled over its back. Its thick armor glinted in the light from the twins wands, which were pointed at it.**

"**Fuck." Taylor mumbled staring wide eyed at the enormous Skrewt.**

Others in the room looked as though they wanted to scold Taylor for her language but knew it was futile. Taylor would never change.

**"Stupefy!" The spell hit the skrewt's armor and rebounded; Harry ducked just in time, but could smell burning hair; it had singed the top of his head. The skrewt issued a blast of fire from its end and flew forward toward him and Taylor.**

"**Expulso." Taylor said aiming at the skrewt.**

"See I go for less dangerous spells." Harry said.

"Think you can fight Death Eaters and Dark Lords with tickling charms?" Taylor asked her brother.

**"Impedimenta!" Harry yelled. The spell hit the skrewt's armor again and ricocheted off; Harry staggered back a few paces and fell over. **

**"IMPEDIMENTA!" The skrewt was inches from Harry when it froze - Taylor had managed to hit it on its fleshy, shell-less underside. Panting, Harry pushed himself away from it and ran, hard, in the opposite direction - the Impediment Curse was not permanent; the skrewt would be regaining the use of its legs at any moment. Taylor was right behind Harry.**

"I wasn't hanging around for the thing to start moving again." Taylor told them.

**They took a left path and hit a dead end, a right, and hit another; forcing themselves to stop, heart hammering, Taylor performed the Four-Point Spell again, backtracked, and chose a path that would take them northwest.**

**They had been hurrying along the new path for a few minutes, when they heard something in the path running parallel to their own that made them stop dead.**

**"What are you doing?" yelled Cedric's voice. "What the hell d'you think you're doing?"**

**And then they heard Krum's voice.**

**"Crucio!"**

"He was Imperioused!" Taylor said quickly.

**The air was suddenly full of Cedric's yells. Horrified, the twins began sprinting up their path, trying to find a way into Cedric's. When none appeared, they tried the Reductor Curse again. It wasn't very effective, but it burned a small hole in the hedge through which they forced their legs, kicking at the thick brambles and branches until they broke and made an opening; they struggled through it, tearing their robes and Taylor got a few scratches on her face,**

"They were not scratches Taylor." Madam Pomfrey said. "They were in fact fairly deep."

**they looked to their right, saw Cedric jerking and twitching on the ground, Krum standing over him.**

**The twins pulled themselves up and pointed their wands at Krum just as Krum looked up. Krum turned and began to run.**

**"Stupefy!" the twins yelled together.**

**The spells hit Krum in the back; he stopped dead in his tracks, fell forward, and lay motionless, facedown in the grass. The twins dashed over to Cedric, who had stopped twitching and was lying there panting, his hands over his face.**

**"Are you all right?" Harry said roughly, grabbing Cedric's arm.**

**"Yeah," panted Cedric. "Yeah ... I don't believe it... he crept up behind me. ... I heard him, I turned around, and he had his wand on me. . . ."**

**Cedric got up. He was still shaking. He, Harry and Taylor looked down at Krum.**

**"I can't believe this ... I thought he was all right," Harry said, staring at Krum.**

"He is." Hermione said.

**"So did I," said Cedric."**

"**Did you hear Fleur scream earlier?" Taylor asked.**

"Still worried about me?" Fleur asked Taylor who blushed. During their fourth year Taylor took to heart what Dumbledore said about international magical cooperation and making friends and she became good friends with Fleur and after the second task the two became even closer.

**"Yeah," said Cedric. "You don't think Krum got her too?"**

"He did not." Fleur mumbled.

**"I don't know," said Taylor slowly.**

**"Should we leave him here?" Cedric muttered.**

**"No," said Harry. **

**"I reckon we should send up red sparks. Someone'll come and collect him . . . otherwise he'll probably be eaten by a skrewt." Taylor said looking up and down their path.**

"Did you know he was imperioused then?" Charlie asked.

"No."

Charlie just shook his head at the twins.

**"He'd deserve it," Cedric muttered, but all the same, he raised his wand and shot a shower of red sparks into the air, which hovered high above Krum, marking the spot where he lay.**

**Harry, Taylor and Cedric stood there in the darkness for a moment, looking around them. Then Cedric said, "Well... I s'pose we'd better go on. . . ."**

**"What?" said Harry. "Oh . . . yeah . . . right. . ." It was an odd moment. He, Taylor and Cedric had been briefly united against Krum - now the fact that they were opponents came back to Harry. The three of them proceeded up the dark path without speaking, then the twins turned left, and Cedric right. Cedric's footsteps soon died away.**

**The twins moved on, continuing to use the Four-Point Spell, making sure they were moving in the right direction. It was between them and Cedric now. Harry's desire to reach the cup first was now burning stronger than ever, but the twins could still hardly believe what they'd just seen Krum do. The use of an Unforgivable Curse on a fellow human being meant a life term in Azkaban, that was what Moody had told them. Krum surely couldn't have wanted the Triwizard Cup that badly...Harry sped up and Taylor was forced to copy, still constantly checking behind them.**

"You were nearly running. What would you have done if we turned the corner and ran into something dangerous? You weren't even checking before you turned." Taylor moaned shaking her head.

**Every so often they hit more dead ends, but the increasing darkness made them feel sure they were getting near the heart of the maze. Then, as they strode down a long, straight path, they saw movement once again, and their beams of wandlight hit an extraordinary creature, one which they had only seen in picture form, in their Monster Book of Monsters.**

**It was a sphinx. Taylor smiled, Care of Magical Creatures was one of her favourite lessons, next to Defence Against the Dark Arts.**

"Which is why I'm Hagrid's favourite." She said cheekily. "I like dangerous creatures too."

**It had the body of an over-large lion: great clawed paws and a long yellowish tail ending in a brown tuft. Its head, however, was that of a woman. She turned her long, almond-shaped eyes upon the twins as they approached. They raised their wands, hesitating. She was not crouching as if to spring, but pacing from side to side of the path, blocking their progress. Then she spoke, in a deep, hoarse voice.**

**"You are very near your goal. The quickest way is past me."**

**"So ... so will you move, please?" said Harry, knowing what the answer was going to be and ignoring Taylor's eye role with well-practised ease.**

Taylor rolled her eyes at that comment.

"What you do role your eyes a lot." Harry defended.

**"No," she said, continuing to pace. "Not unless you can answer my riddle. Answer on your first guess - I let you pass. Answer wrongly - I attack. Remain silent - I will let you walk away from me unscathed."**

**Harry's stomach slipped several notches. It was Hermione who was good at this sort of thing, not him, Taylor was better than him but not as good as Hermione. They weighed their chances. If the riddle was too hard, they could keep silent, get away from the sphinx unharmed, and try and find an alternative route to the centre.**

"Good plan." Tonks nodded.

**"Okay," Taylor said. "Can we hear the riddle?"**

**The sphinx sat down upon her hind legs, in the very middle of the path, and recited:**

**"First think of the person who lives in disguise, Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies. Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend, The middle of middle and end of the end? And finally give me the sound often heard During the search for a hard-to-find word. Now string them together, and answer me this, Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?"**

Hermione gaped.

**Harry gaped at her. Taylors brow furrowed.**

**"Could we have it again . . . more slowly?" Harry asked tentatively. She blinked at him, smiled, and repeated the poem. **

**"All the clues add up to a creature I wouldn't want to kiss?" Taylor asked.**

**She merely smiled her mysterious smile. The twins took that for a "yes." They cast their minds around. There were plenty of animals they wouldn't want to kiss; their immediate thought was a Blast-Ended Skrewt, but something told them that wasn't the answer. They'd have to try and work out the clues.**

"Well there are a lot of things I wouldn't want to kiss." Harry mumbled.

**"A person in disguise," Harry muttered, staring at her, "who lies ... er ... that'd be a - an impostor. No, that's not my guess!"**

"**A - a spy?" Taylor asked.**

"Spy." Hermione mumbled.

"**We'll come back to that. . . could you give us the next clue again, please?"**

**She repeated the next lines of the poem.**

**"'The last thing to mend,'" Taylor repeated. "Er ... no idea . . . 'middle of middle' . . . could we have the last bit again?"**

**She gave them the last four lines.**

**"'The sound often heard during the search for a hard-to-find word,'" said Harry. **

**"Er . . . that'd be ... er. . ." Taylor muttered to herself.**

"**Hang on - 'er'! Er's a sound!" Harry cried.**

"Spy er." Ginny muttered.

**The sphinx smiled at them.**

**"Spy ... er ... spy ... er ..." said Harry, pacing up and down. **

**"A creature I wouldn't want to kiss . . ." Taylor mumbled.**

"**A spider!" They both shouted together.**

Ron shuddered at the mention of spiders.

**The sphinx smiled more broadly. She got up, stretched her front legs, and then moved aside for them to pass.**

"**Thanks!" said Taylor, and, amazed at their own brilliance, Harry dashed forward. As Taylor looked at the sphinx once more before following.**

"I wanted to stay and chat with it." Taylor mumbled.

**They had to be close now, they had to be. ... Their wands were telling them they were bang on course; as long as they didn't meet anything too horrible, they might have a chance. . .**

**The twins broke into a run. They had a choice of paths up ahead. "Point Me!" Harry whispered again to his wand, and it spun around and pointed him to the right-hand one. The twins dashed up this one and saw light ahead.**

**The Triwizard Cup was gleaming on a plinth a hundred yards away. Suddenly a dark figure hurtled out onto the path in front of them.**

**Cedric was going to get there first. Cedric was sprinting as fast as he could toward the cup, and the twins knew they would never catch up, Cedric was much taller, had much longer legs -Then the twins saw something immense over a hedge to their left, moving quickly along a path that intersected with their own; it was moving so fast Cedric was about to run into it, and Cedric, his eyes on the cup, had not seen it –**

**"Cedric!" The twins bellowed. "On your left!"**

**Cedric looked around just in time to hurl himself past the thing and avoid colliding with it, but in his haste, he tripped. Harry saw Cedric's wand fly out of his hand as a gigantic spider**

"One of Aragog's relatives." The twins muttered as Ron went pale.

**stepped into the path and began to bear down upon Cedric.**

**"Stupefy!" Harry yelled; the spell hit the spider's gigantic, hairy black body, but for all the good it did, he might as well have thrown a stone at it; the spider jerked, scuttled around, and ran at Harry instead.**

**"Stupefy! Impedimenta! Stupefy!" But it was no use - the spider was either so large, or so magical, that the spells were doing no more than aggravating it. **

"**Reducto! Bombara! Expulso!"**

"Three guesses who shot off those spells." Gred joked.

**The spider changed targets again and was charging at Taylor before she had chance to do anything. She caught one horrifying glimpse of eight shining black eyes and razor-sharp pincers before it was upon her.**

"Why me? Why when something tries to kill us does it always attack me first, or injure me the most." Taylor huffed.

**She was lifted into the air in its front legs; struggling madly, she tried to kick it; her leg connected with the pincers and next moment she was in excruciating pain.**

"Third worst pain I've felt."

"What's one and two?" Fleur asked.

"Basalisk venom is two and the Cruciatus curse is one." Taylor said flippantly.

**She could hear Cedric and Harry yelling "Stupefy!" too, but their spells had no more effect than hers had - Taylor raised her wand as the spider opened its pincers once more and shouted the first spell that came to mind. "Expelliarmus!"**

**It worked - the Disarming Spell made the spider drop her, but that meant that Taylor fell twelve feet onto her already injured leg, which crumpled beneath her. Without pausing to think, she aimed high at the spider's underbelly, as she had done with the skrewt, and shouted "Stupefy!" **

"Not even gonna pause?" Feorge asked. "Pincer stabbed you in the leg, dropped twelve feet, laying on the floor in pain and that still doesn't make you stop!"

**just as Cedric and Harry yelled the same thing.**

**The three spells combined did what one and two alone had not: The spider keeled over sideways, flattening a nearby hedge, and strewing the path with a tangle of hairy legs.**

**"Taylor!" She heard Cedric shouting. **

**"Are you all right? Did it fall on you?" She heard a frantic Harry yell.**

"I was so worried."

"You shouldn't have been I was okay."

**"No," Taylor called back, panting. She looked down at her leg. It was bleeding freely. She could see some sort of thick, gluey secretion from the spider's pincers on her torn robes. She tried to get up, but her leg was shaking badly and did not want to support her weight. She leaned against the hedge, gasping for breath, and looked around.**

"Maybe I was a little less than okay." Taylor mumbled.

**Cedric was standing feet from the Triwizard Cup, which was gleaming behind him and Harry was coming towards her, worry evident on his face.**

**"Take it, then," Taylor panted to Cedric, leaning on Harry. "Go on, take it. You're there."**

"He doesn't want to." Luna whispered. "You both saved him."

**But Cedric didn't move. He merely stood there, looking at Taylor and Harry. Then he turned to stare at the cup. The twins saw the longing expression on his face in its golden light. Cedric looked around at twins again, Taylor who was now holding onto the hedge as well. Cedric took a deep breath.**

**"You two take it. You should win. That's twice you've both saved my neck in here."**

**"That's not how it's supposed to work," Harry said. **

"As if you two wouldn't do the same." George said.

"Oh wait you are." Fred finished.

**Taylor felt angry; her leg was very painful, she was aching all over from trying to throw off the spider, and after all her and Harry's efforts, Cedric had beaten them to it, just as he'd beaten Harry to ask Cho to the ball.**

Harry blushed a brilliant Weasley blush.

**"The one who reaches the cup first gets the points. That's you. I'm telling you, I'm not going to win any races on this leg." Taylor said through gritted teeth.**

"It was true, I could barely stand." Taylor muttered not seeing Fleur's worried look.

"**And I'm not leaving her alone." Harry told him.**

"We've gotta stick together right sis?"

"Right. What did we used to say when we were younger? I can't remember."

"It's you and me against the world." Harry told her.

**Cedric took a few paces nearer to the Stunned spider, away from the cup, shaking his head.**

**"No," he said.**

**"Stop being noble,"**

"You two can't talk!" The Hogwarts student shouted.

**said the twins irritably. "Just take it, then we can all get out of here."**

**Cedric watched Taylor steadying herself, holding tight to the hedge and Harry.**

**"You both told me about the dragons," Cedric said. "I would've gone down in the first task if you hadn't told me what was coming."**

**"We had help on that too," Harry snapped, as Taylor was trying to mop up her bloody leg with her robes.**

Madam Pomfrey shot a worried look over at Taylor. She knew physically the twins were now fine but mentally she knew they weren't and that they wouldn't let anyone help them.

**"You helped us with the egg - we're square." Taylor groaned.**

**"I had help on the egg in the first place," said Cedric.**

**"We're still square," said the twins, Taylor testing her leg gingerly; it shook violently as she put weight on it; she had sprained her ankle when the spider had dropped her.**

"The least of my worries." Taylor muttered.

**"You should've got more points on the second task," said Cedric mulishly. "You both stayed behind to get all the hostages. I should've done that."**

**"I was the only one who was thick enough to take that song seriously! Taylor stayed because she refused to leave me alone." said Harry bitterly. **

"We gotta stick together right bro?" Taylor repeated.

**"Just take the cup!" Taylor shouted.**

**"No," said Cedric.**

**He stepped over the spider's tangled legs to join the twins, who stared at him. Cedric was serious. He was walking away from the sort of glory Hufflepuff House hadn't had in centuries.**

"**Go on," Cedric said. He looked as though this was costing him every ounce of resolution he had, but his face was set, his arms were folded, he seemed decided.**

**Harry looked from Cedric to the cup. For one shining moment, he saw him and Taylor emerging from the maze, holding it. He saw him and Taylor holding the Triwizard Cup aloft, heard the roar of the crowd, saw Cho's face shining with admiration, more clearly than he had ever seen it before **

"Obsessed." Taylor coughed.

**. . . and then the picture faded, and he found himself staring at Cedric's shadowy, stubborn face.**

**"All three of us," The twins said.**

"No." Harry mumbled.

"That's why you blame yourselves?" Sirius asked.

"We don't want to talk about it." The twins said stubbornly.

**"What?"**

"**You heard." Taylor said still trying to stop the flow of blood.**

"Wasn't really in the mood to repeat myself. Y'know with my leg still bleeding heavily." Taylor said sarcasm heavy in her voice.

**"We'll take it at the same time. It's still a Hogwarts victory. We'll tie for it."**

**Cedric stared at the twins. He unfolded his arms.**

**"You - you sure?"**

**"Yeah," said Harry. "Yeah . . . we've all helped each other out, haven't we? All three of us got here. Let's just take it together."**

**F****or a moment, Cedric looked as though he couldn't believe his ears; then his face split in a grin.**

**"You're on," he said. "Come here."**

**He grabbed Taylors other arm below the shoulder and helped her limp toward the plinth where the cup stood. When they had reached it, all three of them held a hand out over one of the cup's gleaming handles, Harry and Taylor sharing one.**

**"On three, right?" said Taylor. "One - two - three -"**

**The twins and Cedric both grasped a handle.**

**Instantly, the twins felt a jerk somewhere behind their navel. Their feet had left the ground.**

**They could not unclench the hands holding the Triwizard Cup; it was pulling them onward in a howl of wind and swirling colour, Cedric with them.**

"He shouldn't have been." The twins whispered.

"That is the end of this chapter. Who would like to read next?" Dumbledore asked.

"I will." McGonagall said looking at the book as if it were the devil himself.

**A/N: The first real chapter, hope you enjoyed it.**

**So far with the Votes.**

**Tonks – 2**

**Hermione- 1**

**Ginny- 0**

**Keep voting either in the poll, by PM-ing me or writing it in your review.**


	3. Another letter

**Disclaimer: I only own our lovely Taylor Potter and letter sender Kate Beckett.**

_Hi all,_

_Yup another letter but this one brings good news. The first thing… the twins probably won't think this is good but the resistance has found a way to send you memories from the Potter twins past and a select few future events. You'll watch them as if you were watching a Pensieve memory but you have no choice when you see it or what you see._

_The next thing is I was thinking, if we can all send these books from the future (my present) then surely we can bring things from your past to your time._

_So without further a due I would like you all to say hello to James and Lily Potter. Don't worry they already know what's going on and what has happened to them._

_Enjoy reading the books and I hope you like meeting your parents twins._

_Always,_

_Kate Beckett._

As soon as Dumbledore finished the letter there was a flash of blinding white light that was soon replaced by two people. A pretty red head with stunning emerald green eyes and a man with scruffy hair that looks like he's just gotten off of a broom.

"Prongs, Lily?" Sirius and Remus asked.

"Padfoot, Mooney?"

"Sirius, Remus?"

The four met in the middle of the room hugging and crying.

"Mum, Dad?" A small whisper was heard from the corner of the room. Harry Potter was too shocked to project his voice. At least he reacted better than his sister, a resounding slam echoed around the room as Taylor ran out of the room. Harry looked torn, he didn't know what to do, chase after his sister who he was sure had tears streaming down her face or rush to his parents, hug them and never let go. Luckily Fleur helped with that decision.

"Go talk to your parents 'Arry I'll check on Taylor." She said before leaving the room.

Taylor had ran up to Buckbeak's room, thrown herself onto the floor next to the Hippogriff and was sobbing her heart out.

"Taylor." She heard someone call, they sounded as though they were downstairs. Taylor tried to control her sobs so whoever was looking for her wouldn't find her.

"Taylor." Someone's hand was on her shoulder. Fleur was looking down at the younger girl, who was curled up into the foetal position and sobbing hysterically. "Taylor mon ange (my angel) what's the matter?"

"I – I can't." Sobbed out Taylor.

"Can't what?" Fleur asked settling on the floor next to Taylor, holding onto the younger girl who put her head into Fleur's lap.

"Know them, I can't do this. I can't get to know them."

"Of course you can Darling. That's why they're here."

"They are here whilst we read these stupid books! These books that will not take forever to read! I can't get to know them because they are going to leave and me and Harry will be alone! Again! I can't put myself through that, it was hard enough once. I don't think I'll survive it again."

"You'll survive. You Taylor Potter are the strongest person I know. You can survive anything."

"Obviously I can't. I mean I die in about four years' time."

"That won't happen." Fleur said adamantly. "We won't let it. I won't let it." She promised.

The two sit in silence for a while, a silence only broken by Taylors sobs that were slowly getting quieter and further apart. Finally after what seemed like an eternity Taylor stopped crying but she didn't move her head off Fleur's lap. Fleur was stroking her hair and occasionally pressing kisses into it.

"I still don't think I can do it." Taylor whispered in a weak voice. A voice she personally hated, she couldn't stand being weak. She couldn't afford to be weak.

"You don't have to do it alone." Fleur whispered back. "I'll be with you, Harry will be with you, your friends will be with you. If you let this chance slip by Taylor you will never forgive yourself. They may only be here for a short while but at least you'll get to know them, make some memories. This way when you think about your parents they won't just be names and faces you will have something to put with it. Their voices, their laughter, an inside joke, a silly moment."

Taylor took a deep breath in and blew it out. "Promise you'll stay with me?" She asked.

"Always." Fleur promised. The two stood up and Fleur took hold off Taylor's hand. "Come on ma belle (my beautiful) let's go meet your parents."

"What does that mean?" Taylor asked as she led the way out of the room, hoping to distract herself from her sudden nerves.

"I will tell you another time ma chère (my dear)."

"That's not fair." Taylor whined pouting playfully. "You can't say something to me in a language I don't know and then not tell me what you're saying."

"Ready to go in?" Fleur asked when they reached the kitchen door.

"Nope, but I'm not a lion for no reason. Let's go."

"Lioness. You're a Lioness." Fleur commented idly as she opened the door, still holding onto Taylors hand and led her inside. The occupants of the room immediately stopped talking when the two entered.

"Wow. Who knew silence could be so loud." Taylor joked shuffling nervously and rubbing the back of her neck.

"We should all go." Hermione said. "Give them all some time together." Everyone seemed in agreement, although Fleur asked Taylor twice if she wanted her to stay.

"Hi." Taylor started awkwardly when it was only the Potter's in the room. Harry rushed to his sisters side and enveloped her in a hug. "I'm okay." She whispered to him.

"Hi Bambi." James greeted quietly, still on the other side of the room next to his wife.

"Bambi?"

"Well," James grinned his Potter grin. "Harry was nicknamed Prongslette when her was born and your mum decided that you should be Bambi from the muggle film." He explained looking nervous.

"Bambi… I approve."

Then all four met in the middle of the room, their first family hug. Years later Harry and Taylor would still be trying to figure out who moved first but it didn't matter. The family was together again, and even if it was only for the duration of time it took them to read the books, it didn't matter. They were going to learn everything about one another. The words mum and dad were finally going to mean something to the twins, they weren't just going to be words. And finally they would learn Parental love, the only thing the twins had ever wanted.

**A/N: So mummy and daddy Potter have come. I will be uploading the next part of the reading either later tonight or tomorrow morning. Don't forget to review and vote on the poll.**


	4. Chapter 2

**A/N: So here is the newest chapter.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

"I'll read." Professor McGonagall said. Harry was sat next to his father and one Nymphadora 'Use-my-first-name-and-I'll-kill-you' Tonks, whilst Taylor was sat next to her mother and Fleur, who was holding her hand for comfort.

**The twins felt their feet slam into the ground; Taylors injured leg gave way, and she fell forward; her hand let go of the Triwizard Cup at last. She raised her head.**

**"Where are we?" Harry asked.**

"Should've figured it out quicker." Harry mumbled.

"There's no way you could've known." Tonks told him. "You too." She added throwing a stern look at Taylor.

**Cedric shook his head. He and Harry got up and pulled Taylor, who was pulling her wand out,**

"Good girl." Moody grumbled.

**to her feet, and they looked around.**

**They had left the Hogwarts grounds completely; they had obviously travelled miles -perhaps hundreds of miles - for even the mountains surrounding the castle were gone.**

**They were standing instead in a dark and overgrown graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a large yew tree to their right. A hill rose above them to their left. The twins could just make out the outline of a fine old house on the hillside.**

"Riddle Mansion." Taylor grumbled.

**Cedric looked down at the Triwizard Cup and then up at the twins.**

**"Did anyone tell you the cup was a Portkey?" he asked.**

**"Nope," said Harry. He and Taylor were looking around the graveyard. It was completely silent and slightly eerie. "Is this supposed to be part of the task?"**

"We would never let you out of our sights." Sprout told them.

**"I dunno," said Cedric. He sounded slightly nervous. "Wands out, d'you reckon?"**

"They should've already been out." Harry said. "Like you." He nodded towards his sister, who had leaned her head onto Fleur's shoulder, trying to hold her tears in.

**"Yeah," said Harry, glad that Cedric had made the suggestion rather than him.**

**Harry and Cedric pulled out their wands, Taylor already had hers in her hand. The twins kept looking around them. They had, yet again, the strange feeling that they were being watched.**

"We should've reacted quicker." The twins moaned.

Fleur seemed to have had enough. "How could you have known? It was tragic but how were you two to know what was going to happen?"

"We should've got Cedric out." Harry told her trying to stay calm.

"I should've pushed him out of the way. Made sure he stayed alive, taken the damn curse instead!" Shocked silence was met after Taylors outburst. No one knew what to say, Taylor had just told them all she should've died instead of Cedric. Fleur held onto Taylor's hand tighter and her mother stroked the girls hair.

**"Someone's coming," Harry said suddenly.**

**Squinting tensely through the darkness, they watched the figure drawing nearer, walking steadily toward them between the graves. The twins couldn't make out a face, but from the way it was walking and holding its arms, they could tell that it was carrying something.**

**Whoever it was, he was short, and wearing a hooded cloak pulled up over his head to obscure his face. And - several paces nearer, the gap between them closing all the time – the twins saw that the thing in the persons arms looked like a baby ... or was it merely a bundle of robes?**

**Harry lowered his wand slightly,**

"Never lower your wand until you're sure you aren't going to get hurt." Tonks told him.

**as Taylor grit her teeth and again tightened the grip on her wand so tightly her knuckles had turned white,**

"Good girl, good grip." Moody growled.

"I was mostly holding on that tight because my leg was killing me." Taylor admitted.

**and glanced sideways at Cedric. Cedric shot them a quizzical look. They both turned back to watch the approaching figure, who Taylor had yet to take her eyes off.**

"Never take your eyes off of your target." Kingsley said.

**It stopped beside a towering marble headstone, only six feet from them. For a second Harry, Taylor and Cedric and the short figure simply looked at one another.**

"Run." Ginny whispered.

**And then, without warning, the twins scars exploded with pain. It was agony such as they had never felt in all their lives;**

"Oh, my babies." Lily cried as she grabbed onto Taylor tighter and James hugged Harry tightly.

**their wands slipped from their fingers as they put their hands over their faces; their knees buckled; they were on the ground and they could see nothing at all; their heads were about to split open, they were sure of it.**

"Second most horrific pain ever." Harry muttered.

"Third for me." Taylor said.

"Crucio number one." They both said.

"What's your number two?" Remus asked Taylor.

"Basalisk venom." She shrugged.

**From far away, above their heads, they heard a high, cold voice say, "Kill the spare."**

**Taylor tried to fight through the pain, tried to stand up but the pain from her head and leg were too intense that she couldn't.**

"I should've tried harder." Taylor whispered brokenly. Fleur gripped onto her tighter and stroked her hair.

"You tried and no one can think any less of you for that." The French women told her.

**A swishing noise and a second voice, which screeched the words to the night: "Avada Kedavra!"**

"The two words that have ruined our lives more than anything else ever could." Harry whispered so quietly only Tonks heard. In that moment something came over Tonks, she didn't know why but she wanted to wrap her arms around Harry, hold on as tight as she can and protect him from the world. She shook her head. Where did that come from?

**A blast of green light blazed through the twins eyelids, and they heard something heavy fall to the ground beside them; the pain in their scars reached such a pitch that they retched,**

Fleur gripped tighter on Taylor's hand and Tonks couldn't control herself, in the midst of her worry she grabbed a hold of Harry's hand to remind herself that he was still there and that he was okay.

**and then it diminished; terrified of what they were about to see, they opened their stinging eyes.**

**Cedric was lying spread-eagled on the ground in between them. He was dead.**

A solitary tear fell down Taylor's cheek.

**For a second that contained an eternity, the twins stared into Cedric's face, at his open grey eyes, blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted house, at his half-open mouth, which looked slightly surprised. And then, before the twins minds had accepted what they were seeing, before they could feel anything but numb disbelief, they felt themselves being pulled to their feet.**

"Get off my pups!" Sirius yelled looking from Harry to Taylor so quickly Remus worried he'd get whiplash.

**The short man in the cloak had put down his bundle, lit his wand, and was dragging both Harry and Taylor toward the marble headstone. The twins saw the name upon it flickering in the wandlight before they were forced around and slammed against it.**

Harry rubbed his head with his spare hand remembering the pain.

**TOM RIDDLE. The cloaked man was now conjuring tight cords around Harry and Taylor, tying them from neck to ankles to the headstone. Harry could hear shallow, fast breathing from the depths of the hood;**

"It sounded like he was scared." Harry muttered.

"He was." Taylor spat.

**Taylor struggled and kicked out ignoring the pain in her leg**

"You always ignore your pain." Hermione whispered tears steadily flowing down her cheeks.

"Other things to worry about." Taylor shrugged. She had a high pain tolerance, she'd had one all her life.

**and was pleased when she caught the man in the shin,**

The W twins cheered and congratulated her trying to get rid of some of the tension in the room.

**the man was less than please though and he hit her**

Fleur growled. As did Remus and Sirius. James swore and Lily threatened the mans life.

**- hit her with a hand that had a finger missing. And Taylor realized who was under the hood. It was Wormtail.**

"Him." The Mauraders spat.

**"You!" She spat.**

**But Wormtail, who had finished conjuring the ropes, did not reply; he was busy checking the tightness of the cords, his fingers trembling uncontrollably,**

"Why is he scared?" Ron hissed. "Someone would think he was the two fourteen year olds that had been kidnapped and witnessed someone die."

**rumbling over the knots. Once sure that the twins were bound so tightly to the headstone that they couldn't move an inch, Wormtail drew a length of some black material from the inside of his cloak and stuffed it roughly into Harry's mouth and repeated the same action with Taylor;**

"I'll kill him." Lily roared.

**then, without a word, he turned from the twins and hurried away. The twins couldn't make a sound, nor could they see where Wormtail had gone; they couldn't turn their heads to see beyond the headstone; they could see only what was right in front of them.**

**Cedric's body was lying some twenty feet away. Some way beyond him, glinting in the starlight, lay the Triwizard Cup. Harry and Taylors wands were on the ground at Cedric's feet. The bundle of robes that Harry had thought was a baby was close by, at the foot of the grave.**

**It seemed to be stirring fretfully. The twins watched it, and their scars seared with pain again . . . and they suddenly knew that they didn't want to see what was in those robes ... they didn't want that bundle opened**

"Unfortunately fate likes to fuck with us." Taylor muttered.

**... they could hear noises at their feet. They looked down and saw a gigantic snake slithering through the grass, circling the headstone where they were tied. Wormtail's fast, wheezy breathing was growing louder again. It sounded as though he was forcing something heavy across the ground. Then he came back within the twins range of vision, and they saw him pushing a stone cauldron to the foot of the grave. It was full of what seemed to be water - they could hear it slopping around - and it was larger than any cauldron the twins had ever used; a great stone belly large enough for a full-grown man to sit in.**

"Or come out off." Harry said.

**The thing inside the bundle of robes on the ground was stirring more persistently, as though it was trying to free itself. Now Wormtail was busying himself at the bottom of the cauldron with a wand. Suddenly there were crackling flames beneath it. The large snake slithered away into the darkness.**

**The liquid in the cauldron seemed to heat very fast. The surface began not only to bubble, but to send out fiery sparks, as though it were on fire. Steam was thickening, blurring the outline of Wormtail tending the fire. The movements beneath the robes became more agitated. And the twins heard the high, cold voice again.**

**"Hurry!"**

Ginny whimpered.

**The whole surface of the water was alight with sparks now. It might have been encrusted with diamonds.**

**"It is ready. Master."**

**"Now ..." said the cold voice.**

**Wormtail pulled open the robes on the ground, revealing what was inside them, and the twins both let out a yell that was strangled in the wad of material blocking their mouths.**

**It was as though Wormtail had flipped over a stone and revealed something ugly, slimy, and blind - but worse, a hundred times worse. The thing Wormtail had been carrying had the shape of a crouched human child, except that the twins had never seen anything less like a child. It was hairless and scaly-looking, a dark, raw, reddish black. Its arms and legs were thin and feeble, and its face - no child alive ever had a face like that - flat and snakelike, with gleaming red eyes.**

"I preferred him like that." Harry moaned.

**The thing seemed almost helpless; it raised its thin arms, put them around Wormtail's neck, and Wormtail lifted it. As he did so, his hood fell back, and the twins saw the look of revulsion on Wormtail's weak, pale face in the firelight as he carried the creature to the rim of the cauldron. For one moment, they saw the evil, flat face illuminated in the sparks dancing on the surface of the potion. And then Wormtail lowered the creature into the cauldron; there was a hiss, and it vanished below the surface; the twins heard its frail body hit the bottom with a soft thud.**

**Let it drown, they thought, their scars burning almost past endurance, please. . . let it drown. . .**

"Let it drown." People in the room also whispered, hoping beyond all hope that it would, forgetting that this had already happened and the twins had already suffered.

**Wormtail was speaking. His voice shook; he seemed frightened beyond his wits. He raised his wand, closed his eyes, and spoke to the night.**

**"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!"**

**The surface of the grave at the twins feet cracked. Horrified, they watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Wormtail's command and fell softly into the cauldron. The diamond surface of the water broke and hissed; it sent sparks in all directions and turned a vivid, poisonous-looking blue.**

**And now Wormtail was whimpering. He pulled a long, thin, shining silver dagger from inside his cloak. His voice broke into petrified sobs.**

**"Flesh - of the servant - w-willingly given - you will - revive - your master. "**

**He stretched his right hand out in front of him - the hand with the missing finger. He gripped the dagger very tightly in his left hand and swung it upward.**

"He's not?" Tonks asked revolted.

"He is." Harry whispered to her, squeezing her hand that had a death grip on his.

**The twins realized what Wormtail was about to do a second before it happened - they closed their eyes as tightly as they could, but they could not block the scream that pierced the night, that went through the twins as though they had been stabbed with the dagger too. They heard something fall to the ground, heard Wormtail's anguished panting, then a sickening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron. They couldn't stand to look . . .but the potion had turned a burning red; the light of it shone through their closed eyelids. . .**

"He cut his hand off." Bill said horrified.

**Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony. Not until Taylor felt Wormtail's anguished breath on her face did she realize that Wormtail was right in front of them.**

"Get away from my pups." Sirius yelled as Remus roared the same about his cubs and James and Lily yelled about their babies.

"Stay away from ma bichette (my little doe)." Fleur whispered so only Taylor could hear.

**"B-blood of the enemy . . . forcibly taken .. . you will. . . resurrect your foe."**

**Taylor could do nothing to prevent it, she was tied too tightly. . .. Squinting down, struggling hopelessly at the ropes binding her and Harry, she saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Wormtails remaining hand. She felt its point penetrate the crook of her right arm and blood seeping down the sleeve of her torn robes. Wormtail, still panting with pain, rumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to Taylors cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it. He then did the same to Harry.**

Taylor and Harry rolled up their sleeves and showed everyone the scars from the cut. The amount of curse words and threats shouted was astounding.

**He staggered back to the cauldron with Harry and Taylors blood. He poured it inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white. Wormtail, his job done, dropped to his knees beside the cauldron, then slumped sideways and lay on the ground, cradling the bleeding stump of his arm, gasping and sobbing.**

"You vile pathetic rat!" Lily yelled, pissed at how Wormtail was acting. How dare he kidnap and hurt her babies then sob himself.

**The cauldron was simmering, sending its diamond sparks in all directions, so blindingly bright that it turned all else to velvety blackness. Nothing happened. . .**

**Let it have drowned. The twins thought, let it have gone wrong. . . **

"Please." Ginny, Hermione, Mrs Weasley, Lily, Tonks and Fleur begged.

**And then, suddenly, the sparks emanating from the cauldron were extinguished. A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron instead, obliterating everything in front of the twins, so that they couldn't see Wormtail or Cedric or anything but vapour hanging in the air. ... It's gone wrong, they thought. . . it's drowned. .. please . . . please let it be dead. ...**

No one had a dry face, everyone had tears dripping down their faces, well everyone but Harry, Taylor and of course Snape.

**But then, through the mist in front of them, they saw, with an icy surge of terror, the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletally thin, rising slowly from inside the cauldron.**

**"Robe me," said the high, cold voice from behind the steam, and Wormtail, sobbing and moaning, still cradling his mutilated arm, scrambled to pick up the black robes from the ground, got to his feet, reached up, and pulled them one-handed over his master's head.**

**The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at the twins . . . and the twins stared back into the face that had haunted their nightmares for three years.**

"You had nightmares about him?" Ron and Hermione asked.

The twins nodded.

"Why didn't you tell us?"

"What could you have done? You couldn't have stopped them, it would've only made you worry." The twins told them.

**Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snakes with slits for nostrils . . .**

"That's what he looks like?" Charlie asked looking as though he was about to be sick.

**Lord Voldemort had risen again.**

Deathly silence followed this. No one wanted to speak, no one wanted to continue reading, no one could stand the thought of what was about to happen to the twins. Still the show must go on.

Alastor Moody cleared his throat. "I'll read next."

**A/N: So I'm closing the Poll now, Tonks won by such a landslide. So this story is now a Tonks/Harry and Fleur/OC.**


	5. Chapter 3

**A/N: Thanks for all the reviews, follows and favourites. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.**

_Hi all!_

_So I forgot to bring someone in… oops. It wasn't my fault I swear, but to make up for this mistake we have told her about everything, including one Sirius Blacks innocence. You're welcome. Anyways she's coming now, so without further a due ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, I would like you to meet Amelia Bones!_

_Your-really-sorry-future-friend,_

_Kate Beckett._

A blinding flash of bright white light appeared but as quickly as it came it disappeared again leaving one Amelia Bones its wake. Greetings were made as she explained what she knew then she sat down next to Professor Sprout to listen to the story.

**Voldemort looked away from the twins and began examining his own body.**

Alastor Moody read gruffly.

**His hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cats, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness. He held up his hands and flexed the fingers, his expression rapt and exultant.**

"That's what he looks like?" Tonks asked going a sickly green colour.

"Yup. Ugly prat." Harry told her.

**He took not the slightest notice of Wormtail, who lay twitching and bleeding on the ground, nor of the great snake, which had slithered back into sight and was circling the twins again, hissing. Voldemort slipped one of those unnaturally long-fingered hands into a deep pocket and drew out a wand. He caressed it gently too; and then he raised it, and pointed it at Wormtail, who was lifted off the ground and thrown against the headstone where the twins were tied; he fell to the foot of it and lay there, crumpled up and crying. Voldemort turned his scarlet eyes upon the twins, laughing a high, cold, mirthless laugh.**

The twins closed their eyes trying to block out the flash backs whilst their friends and others in the room tried to hold in their shudders.

**Wormtail's robes were shining with blood now; he had wrapped the stump of his arm in them.**

**"My Lord . . ." he choked, "my Lord . . . you promised . . . you did promise ..."**

"He's a dark lord you prat! He's not keeping his promises!" Taylor spat.

**"Hold out your arm," said Voldemort lazily.**

**"Oh Master . . . thank you, Master ..." He extended the bleeding stump, but Voldemort laughed again.**

This time Taylor did shudder, a full body one which made Fleur grip onto her hand tightly.

**"The other arm, Wormtail."**

**"Master, please . . .please ..."**

**Voldemort bent down and pulled out Wormtail's left arm; he forced the sleeve of Wormtail's robes up past his elbow, and the twins saw something upon the skin there, something like a vivid red tattoo - a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth - the image that had appeared in the sky at the Quidditch World Cup: the Dark Mark. Voldemort examined it carefully, ignoring Wormtail's uncontrollable weeping.**

**"It is back," he said softly, "they will all have noticed it... and now, we shall see ... now we shall know ..."**

"He summoned his Death Eaters." Madam Bones whispered.

**He pressed his long white forefinger to the brand on Wormtail's arm.**

**The scar on the twins foreheads seared with a sharp pain again,**

Tonks' eyes shot to Harry to make sure he was okay, James gripped onto his hand and held it as tightly as he could, Remus and Sirius were both looking from one twin to another wondering how they could help, wanting to save them but knowing it had already happened. Lily was stroking Taylors hair whilst looking at Harry reassuring herself that both of her babies were there, alive and physically fine, Fleur had a death grip on Taylors hand and was looking at the younger girl with worry evident in her eyes.

**and Wormtail let out a fresh howl;**

"Good." The Marauders spat.

**Voldemort removed his fingers from Wormtail's mark, and they saw that it had turned jet black.**

**A look of cruel satisfaction on his face, Voldemort straightened up, threw back his head, and stared around at the dark graveyard.**

**"How many will be brave enough to return when they feel it?" he whispered, his gleaming red eyes fixed upon the stars. "And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?"**

**He began to pace up and down before the twins and Wormtail, eyes sweeping the graveyard all the while. After a minute or so, he looked down at the twins again, a cruel smile twisting his snakelike face.**

"He shouldn't smile." Taylor tried to joke.

"Makes him look even more freaky." Harry continued. Both of them were ignored.

**"You stand, Harry and Taylor Potter, upon the remains of my late father," he hissed softly. "A Muggle and a fool. . . very like your dear mother.**

"Our mother was a witch you snake-faced, hypocritical, noseless, half-blood with goddamn Daddy issues!" Harry and Taylor shouted, both looking livid and ready to attack. Lily smiled at her two babies who jumped to defend her.

**But they both had their uses, did they not? Your mother died to defend you both as a children . . .**

"I'd do it again." Lily whispered.

**and I killed my father, and see how useful he has proved himself, in death. ..."**

**Voldemort laughed again. Up and down he paced, looking all around him as he walked, and the snake continued to circle in the grass.**

**"You see that house upon the hillside, Potters? My father lived there. My mother, a witch who lived here in this village, fell in love with him. But he abandoned her when she told him what she was. ... He didn't like magic, my father . . . He left her and returned to his Muggle parents before I was even born. Potters, and she died giving birth to me, leaving me to be raised in a Muggle orphanage . . . but I vowed to find him ... I revenged myself upon him, that fool who gave me his name . . . Tom Riddle. . . ."**

"Jeez! All this because you don't like your name?" Fred joked.

**Still he paced, his red eyes darting from grave to grave.**

Everyone shuddered.

**"Listen to me, reliving family history . . ." he said quietly, "why, I am growing quite sentimental. . . But look, Harry, Taylor! My true family returns. . . ."**

"Bullshit! You wouldn't know the meaning of family if it came up in front of you and smacked you in the head with a two by four!" Taylor shouted angrily.

**The air was suddenly full of the swishing of cloaks. Between graves, behind the yew tree, in every shadowy space, wizards were Apparating. All of them were hooded and masked. And one by one they moved forward . . . slowly, cautiously, as though they could hardly believe their eyes Voldemort stood in silence, waiting for them. Then one of the Death Eaters fell to his knees, crawled toward Voldemort and kissed the hem of his black robes.**

"Robe kissers." Tonks muttered.

"**Master . . . Master " he murmured.**

**The Death Eaters behind him did the same; each of them approaching Voldemort on his knees and kissing his robes, before backing away and standing up, forming a silent circle, which enclosed Tom Riddle s grave, Harry, Taylor, Voldemort, and the sobbing and twitching heap that was Wormtail. Yet they left gaps in the circle, as though waiting for more people.**

"No, there are enough there." Hermione moaned shakily.

**Voldemort, however, did not seem to expect more. He looked around at the hooded faces, and though there was no wind rustling seemed to run around the circle, as though it had shivered.**

**"Welcome, Death Eaters," said Voldemort quietly. "Thirteen years. . . thirteen years since last we met. Yet you answer my call as though it were yesterday, we are still united under the Dark Mark, then! Or are we?"**

**He put back his terrible face and sniffed, his slit-like nostrils widening.**

**"I smell guilt,"**

"With what? We already said your noseless." Harry said.

**he said. "There is a stench or guilt upon the air." A second shiver ran around the circle, as though each member of it longed, but did not dare to step back from him.**

**"I see you all, whole and healthy, with your powers intact - such prompt appearances! and I ask myself . . . why did this band of wizards never come to the aid of their master, to whom they swore eternal loyalty?"**

**No one spoke. No one moved except Wormtail, who was upon the ground, still sobbing over his bleeding arm.**

Sirius growled and looked very to kill.

**"And I answer myself," whispered Voldemort, "they must have believed me broken, they thought I was gone. They slipped back among my enemies, and they pleaded innocence, and ignorance, and bewitchment. . . . And then I ask myself, but how could they have believed I would not rise again? They, who knew the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself against mortal death?**

Dumbledore paled.

**They, who had seen proofs of the immensity of my power in the times when I was mightier than any wizard living?**

"Yet you got your arse whooped by a couple of babies." Harry said cheekily.

"Then again when they were eleven and twelve." Taylor added with a smirk.

"**And I answer myself, perhaps they believed a still greater power could exist, one that could vanquish even Lord Voldemort. . . perhaps they now pay allegiance to another . . . perhaps that champion of commoners, of Mudbloods and Muggles, Albus Dumbledore?"**

Several people muttered and growled angrily at what the Dark Lord was saying.

**At the mention of Dumbledore's name, the members of the circle stirred, and some muttered and shook their heads. Voldemort ignored them.**

**"It is a disappointment to me ... I confess myself disappointed. . . ."**

**One of the men suddenly flung himself forward, breaking the circle. Trembling from head to foot, he collapsed at Voldemort's feet.**

**"Master!" he shrieked, "Master, forgive me! Forgive us all!"**

**Voldemort began to laugh. He raised his wand.**

**"Crucio!"**

Taylor and Harry both paled drastically and flinched, remembering the pain from the curse. Neither noticed the concerned looks from two witches, the only two who noticed.

**The Death Eater on the ground writhed and shrieked; the twins were sure the sound must carry to the houses around. . . . Let the police come, they thought desperately . . . anyone . . . anything. . .**

"I can't believe we thought that." The twins both said disgustedly.

"Why?" Ginny asked. "You wanted help, needed it."

"If anyone came they would've been Muggles and would've been killed." Taylor told her.

"And we're already responsible for one persons death." Harry muttered.

**Voldemort raised his wand. The tortured Death Eater lay flat upon the ground, gasping.**

**"Get up, Avery,"**

Madam Bones pulled out a pad and a self-inking quill and wrote down Avery.

**said Voldemort softly. "Stand up. You ask for forgiveness? I do not forgive. I do not forget. Thirteen long years ... I want thirteen years' repayment before I forgive you. Wormtail here has paid some of his debt already, have you not, Wormtail?"**

**He looked down at Wormtail, who continued to sob.**

**"You returned to me, not out of loyalty, but out of fear of your old friends. You deserve this pain, Wormtail. You know that, don't you?"**

**"Yes, Master," moaned Wormtail, "please. Master . . . please ..."**

**"Yet you helped return me to my body," said Voldemort coolly, watching Wormtail sob on the ground. "Worthless and traitorous as you are, you helped me ... and Lord Voldemort rewards his helpers... ."**

"Lord Voldemort needs to stop referring to himself in the third person." Taylor muttered, getting a smile from Fleur.

**Voldemort raised his wand again and whirled it through the air. A streak of what looked like molten silver hung shining in the wand's wake. Momentarily shapeless, it writhed and then formed itself into a gleaming replica of a human hand, bright as moonlight, which soared downward and fixed itself upon Wormtails bleeding wrist.**

**Wormtail's sobbing stopped abruptly. His breathing harsh and ragged, he raised his head and stared in disbelief at the silver hand, now attached seamlessly to his arm, as though he were wearing a dazzling glove. He flexed the shining fingers, then, trembling, picked up a small twig on the ground and crushed it into powder.**

"Worthless rat." James hissed.

**"My Lord," he whispered. "Master ... it is beautiful. . . thank you... thank you. ..."**

**He scrambled forward on his knees and kissed the hem of Voldemort's robes.**

**"May your loyalty never waver again, Wormtail," said Voldemort.**

**"No, my Lord . . . never, my Lord . . ."**

**Wormtail stood up and took his place in the circle, staring at his powerful new hand, his face still shining with tears. Voldemort now approached the man on Wormtail's right.**

**"Lucius, my slippery friend," he whispered, halting before him. "I am told that you have not renounced the old ways, though to the world you present a respectable face. You are still ready to take the lead in a spot of Muggle-torture, I believe? Yet you never tried to find me, Lucius. . . . Your exploits at the Quidditch World Cup were fun, I daresay. . . but might not your energies have been better directed toward finding and aiding your master?"**

"They're sick." Hermione whispered, her face pale from the mention of Muggle-torture.

**"My Lord, I was constantly on the alert," came Lucius Malfoy's voice swiftly from beneath the hood. "Had there been any sign from you, any whisper of your whereabouts, I would have been at your side immediately, nothing could have prevented me -"**

**"And yet you ran from my Mark, when a faithful Death Eater sent it into the sky last summer?" said Voldemort lazily, and Mr. Malfoy stopped talking abruptly. "Yes, I know all about that, Lucius. . . . You have disappointed me. ... I expect more faithful service in the future."**

**"Of course, my Lord, of course. . . . You are merciful, thank you. ..."**

"Merciful?" Tonks asked aghast.

**Voldemort moved on, and stopped, staring at the space - large enough for two people -that separated Malfoy and the next man.**

**"The Lestranges should stand here," said Voldemort quietly. "But they are entombed in Azkaban. They were faithful. They went to Azkaban rather than renounce me. . . . When Azkaban is broken open, the Lestranges will be honored beyond their dreams. The dementors will join us ... they are our natural allies ... we will recall the banished giants ... I shall have all my devoted servants returned to me, and an army of creatures whom all fear. ..."**

Madam Bones was writing furiously.

**He walked on. Some of the Death Eaters he passed in silence, but he paused before others and spoke to them.**

**"Macnair**

"That name sounds familiar." Ron said.

"It should, he was at Hogwarts in our third year, the executioner for Buckbeak." Taylor told him.

"Glad we managed to piss him of then." Harry smiled as Ron and Hermione nodded.

**. . . destroying dangerous beasts for the Ministry of Magic now, Wormtail tells me? You shall have better victims than that soon, Macnair. Lord Voldemort will provide. . ."**

**"Thank you, Master . . . thank you," murmured Macnair.**

**"And here" - Voldemort moved on to the two largest hooded figures - "we have Crabbe . . . you will do better this time, will you not, Crabbe? And you, Goyle?"**

**They bowed clumsily, muttering dully.**

"Like Father like sons." Fred and George muttered.

**"Yes, Master ..."**

**"We will, Master..."**

**"The same goes for you, Nott," said Voldemort quietly as he walked past a stooped figure in Mr. Goyles shadow.**

**"My Lord, I prostrate myself before you, I am your most faithful -"**

**"That will do," said Voldemort.**

**He had reached the largest gap of all, and he stood surveying it with his blank, red eyes, as though he could see people standing there.**

**"And here we have six missing Death Eaters . . . three dead in my service. One, too cowardly to return ... he will pay. One, who I believe has left me forever ... he will be killed, of course . . . and one, who remains my most faithful servant, and who has already re-entered my service."**

"Who's he talking about?" Charlie asked the twins.

"Too cowardly is Karkroff, he ran. Left him forever, Snape, he didn't go back until later and the faithful was Crouch Jr." Taylor and Harry said.

"How did you know _Professor_ Snape didn't return until later." Dumbledore said stressing the Professor.

Taylor shrugged. "We're not stupid."

**The Death Eaters stirred, and the twins saw their eyes dart sideways at one another through their masks.**

**"He is at Hogwarts, that faithful servant, and it was through his efforts that our young friends arrived here tonight. . . ."**

"I don't recall every accepting that friendship." Harry said. "What about you Tay."

She shook her head. "I'm pretty sure for it to be a friendship you've got to like the other and it's safe to say he's on the top of my shit list."

**"Yes," said Voldemort, a grin curling his lipless mouth as the eyes of the circle flashed in the twins direction. "Harry and Taylor Potter has kindly joined us for my rebirthing party. One might go so far as to call them my guest of honour."**

"Not like they had much of a choice." Bill muttered.

**There was a silence. Then the Death Eater to the right of Wormtail stepped forward, and Lucius Malfoy's voice spoke from under the mask.**

**"Master, we crave to know ... we beg you to tell us ... how you have achieved this . . . this miracle . . . how you managed to return to us. .. ."**

**"Ah, what a story it is, Lucius," said Voldemort. "And it begins - and ends - with my young friends here."**

**He walked lazily over to stand next to the twins, so that the eyes of the whole circle were upon the two of them. The snake continued to circle.**

**"You know, of course, that they have called these twins my downfall?" Voldemort said softly, his red eyes upon the twins, whose scars began to burn so fiercely that they almost screamed in agony.**

Said twins ignored the pitying looks they were getting.

**"You all know that on the night I lost my powers and my body, I tried to kill them. Their mother died in the attempt to save them - and unwittingly provided them with a protection I admit I had not foreseen. ... I could not touch them."**

**Voldemort raised a white finger from each hand and put it very close to Harry and Taylors cheeks.**

"Get away from my babies!" Lily and James yelled.

"Get away from my cubs/pups!" Remus and Sirius shouted at the same time.

**"Their mother left upon them the traces other sacrifice. . . . This is old magic, I should have remembered it, I was foolish to overlook it... but no matter. I can touch them now."**

**The twins felt the cold tip of the long white finger touch their cheeks,**

"No." Lily gasped her eyes filling up with tears.

**and thought their heads would burst with the pain. Voldemort laughed softly in their ears,**

Harry squirmed remembering the laugh, pain and his breathe on his face.

**then took the fingers away and continued addressing the Death Eaters.**

**"I miscalculated, my friends, I admit it. My curse was deflected by the woman's foolish sacrifice, and it rebounded upon myself. Aaah . . . pain beyond pain, my friends; nothing could have prepared me for it. **

"Good." The four Potters spat.

**I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost. . . but still, I was alive. What I was, even I do not know... I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality. You know my goal - to conquer death. And now, I was tested, and it appeared that one or more of my experiments had worked ... for I had not been killed, though the curse should have done it. Nevertheless, I was as powerless as the weakest creature alive, and without the means to help myself... for I had no body, and every spell that might have helped me required the use of a wand. . .**

**"I remember only forcing myself, sleeplessly, endlessly, second by second, to exist. . . I settled in a faraway place, in a forest, and I waited. . . . Surely, one of my faithful Death Eaters would try and find me. . . one of them would come and perform the magic I could not, to restore me to a body, but I waited in vain. ..."**

**The shiver ran once more around the circle of listening Death Eaters. Voldemort let the silence spiral horribly before continuing.**

**"Only one power remained to me. I could possess the bodies of others. But I dared not go where other humans were plentiful, for I knew that the Aurors were still abroad and searching for me.**

"We should've canvassed the whole world." Kingsley said.

**I sometimes inhabited animals - snakes, of course, being my preference - but I was little better off inside them than as pure spirit, for their bodies were ill adapted to perform magic . . . and my possession of them shortened their lives; none of them lasted long. . .**

**"Then . . . four years ago . . . the means for my return seemed assured. A wizard -young, foolish, and gullible - wandered across my path in the forest I had made my home. Oh, he seemed the very chance I had been dreaming of... for he was a teacher at Dumbledore's school... he was easy to bend to my will... he brought me back to this country, and after a while, I took possession of his body, to supervise him closely as he carried out my orders. But my plan failed. I did not manage to steal the Sorcerer's Stone. I was not to be assured immortal life. I was thwarted . . . thwarted, once again, by Harry and Taylor Potter. . ."**

"You're welcome." Taylor said at the same time as Harry said, "Quirellmort."

**Silence once more; nothing was stirring, not even the leaves on the yew tree. The Death Eaters were quite motionless, the glittering eyes in their masks fixed upon Voldemort, and upon the twins.**

**"The servant died when I left his body, and I was left as weak as ever I had been," Voldemort continued. "I returned to my hiding place far away, and I will not pretend to you that I didn't then fear that I might never regain my powers. . . . Yes, that was perhaps my darkest hour... I could not hope that I would be sent another wizard to possess . . . and I had given up hope, now, that any of my Death Eaters cared what had become of me. ..."**

"That would imply that they can feel." Fleur hissed angrily.

**One or two of the masked wizards in the circle moved uncomfortably, but Voldemort took no notice.**

**"And then, not even a year ago, when I had almost abandoned hope, it happened at last... a servant returned to me. Wormtail here, who had faked his own death to escape justice, was driven out of hiding by those he had once counted friends, and decided to return to his master. He sought me in the country where it had long been rumoured I was hiding . . . helped, of course, by the rats he met along the way. Wormtail has a curious affinity with rats, do you not, Wormtail? His filthy little friends told him there was a place, deep in an Albanian forest, that they avoided, where small animals like themselves had met their deaths by a dark shadow that possessed them.**

The Marauders all looked disgusted at the thought of the rat they used to think of as a friend.

**"But his journey back to me was not smooth, was it, Wormtail? For, hungry one night, on the edge of the very forest where he had hoped to find me, he foolishly stopped at an inn for some food . . . and who should he meet there, but one Bertha Jorkins, a witch from the Ministry of Magic.**

**"Now see the way that fate favours Lord Voldemort.**

"But uses me and Tay as it's bitches." Harry added making Tonks laugh.

**This might have been the end of Wormtail, and of my last hope for regeneration. But Wormtail - displaying a presence of mind I would never have expected from him - convinced Bertha Jorkins to accompany him on a nighttime stroll. He overpowered her ... he brought her to me. And Bertha Jorkins, who might have ruined all, proved instead to be a gift beyond my wildest dreams ... for -with a little persuasion - she became a veritable mine of information.**

"You arseholes!" Kingsley spat.

**"She told me that the Triwizard Tournament would be played at Hogwarts this year. She told me that she knew of a faithful Death Eater who would be only too willing to help me, if I could only contact him. She told me many things. . . but the means I used to break the Memory Charm upon her were powerful, and when I had extracted all useful information from her, her mind and body were both damaged beyond repair. She had now served her purpose. I could not possess her. I disposed of her."**

"Heartless!" Taylor screeched looking ready to kill… again.

**Voldemort smiled his terrible smile, his red eyes blank and pitiless.**

**"Wormtail's body, of course, was ill adapted for possession, as all assumed him dead, and would attract far too much attention if noticed. However, he was the able-bodied servant I needed, and, poor wizard though he is, Wormtail was able to follow the instructions I gave him, which would return me to a rudimentary, weak body of my own, a body I would be able to inhabit while awaiting the essential ingredients for true rebirth ... a spell or two of my own invention ... a little help from my dear Nagini," Voldemorts red eyes fell upon the continually circling snake, **

**"A potion concocted from unicorn blood, and the snake venom Nagini provided**

"That's how he did it." Bones muttered.

"Unicorn Blood." Flitwick gasped.

**... I was soon returned to an almost human form, and strong enough to travel. There was no hope of stealing the Sorcerer's Stone anymore, for I knew that Dumbledore would have seen to it that it was destroyed. But I was willing to embrace mortal life again, before chasing immortality. I set my sights lower ... I would settle for my old body back again, and my old strength.**

"Which, considering he was scrawnier than Harry, must not have been very strong." Taylor said cheekily, shooting her brother and grin and wink.

**"I knew that to achieve this - it is an old piece of Dark Magic, the potion that revived me tonight - I would need three powerful ingredients. Well, one of them was already at hand, was it not, Wormtail? Flesh given by a servant. . . My father's bone, naturally, meant that we would have to come here, where he was buried. But the blood of a foe ... Wormtail would have had me use any wizard, would you not, Wormtail? Any wizard who had hated me ... as so many of them still do. But I knew the one I must use, if I was to rise again, more powerful than I had been when I had fallen.**

"**I wanted the Potter twins blood.**

"Get in line." Harry said.

**I wanted the blood of the ones who had stripped me of power thirteen years ago . . . for the lingering protection their mother once gave them would then reside in my veins too. . .**

Lily was livid, how dare he take the last thing she gave to her babies.

**"But how to get at the Potters? For they have been better protected than I think even they know, protected in ways devised by Dumbledore long ago, when it fell to him to arrange their futures. Dumbledore invoked an ancient magic, to ensure the their protection as long as they are in their relations' care. Not even I can touch them there. . . . Then, of course, there was the Quidditch World Cup. ... I thought their protection might be weaker there, away from their relations and Dumbledore, but I was not yet strong enough to attempt kidnap in the midst of a horde of Ministry wizards. And then, they would return to Hogwarts, where they are under the crooked nose of that Muggle-loving fool from morning until night. So how could I take them?**

"He really has an obsession with you two." Luna said dreamily. "It's not healthy."

Taylor snorted. "Not healthy for us."

**"Why ... by using Bertha Jorkins's information, of course. Use my one faithful Death Eater, stationed at Hogwarts, to ensure that their names was entered into the Goblet of Fire. Use my Death Eater to ensure that they won the tournament - that they touched the Triwizard Cup first - the cup which my Death Eater had turned into a Portkey, which would bring them here, beyond the reach of Dumbledore's help and protection, and into my waiting arms. And here they are ... the twins you all believed had been my downfall. . ."**

"And will be." Dumbledore said quietly, not quietly enough though as his teachers heard him and looked at him questioningly.

**Voldemort moved slowly forward and turned to face Taylor. He raised his wand.**

**"Crucio!"**

"NO!" Lily, James, Sirius, Remus and Fleur yelled.

**It was pain beyond anything Taylor had ever experienced; her very bones were on fire; her head was surely splitting along her scar; her eyes were rolling madly in her head; she wanted it to end ... to black out... to die ...**

Almost everyone was crying.

"That's- that's what it feels like?" Hermione asked through sobs. Harry and Taylor nodded.

"And you really wanted to die?" Ron asked.

"Several times that night." The twins answered in a monotone voice ignoring the looks they were given.

**And then it was gone. She was hanging limply in the ropes binding her to the headstone of Voldemort's father, looking up into those bright red eyes through a kind of mist. The night was ringing with the sound of the Death Eaters' laughter.**

"They laughed?" Mrs Weasley asked, choking on the words. "They laughed as a child was being tortured."

**"You see, I think, how foolish it was to suppose that these twins could ever have been stronger than me,"**

"They are Tom." Dumbledore said to himself again.

**said Voldemort. "But I want there to be no mistake in anybody's mind. The Potter twins escaped me by a lucky chance. And I am now going to prove my power by killing them, here and now, in front of you all, when there is no Dumbledore to help them, and no mother to die for them. I will give them their chance. They will be allowed to fight, and you will be left in no doubt which of us is the stronger. Just a little longer, Nagini,"**

"He was going to feed you to his snake?" Fleur gasped.

Harry shrugged.

** he whispered, and the snake glided away through the grass to where the Death Eaters stood watching.**

**"Now untie them, Wormtail, and give them back their wands."**

"You're going to duel?!" Several people yelled. The twins nodded.


	6. A Memory and More Guests

**A/N: So here's a memory and a few OC's are coming in. Memory scenes are in italics.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OC's.**

A blinding white light lit the room for a second, after it disappeared they were no longer in Grimmauld Place.

"Taylor? Harry?" A voice sounded from behind the group of witches and wizards.

"Niki!" Taylor shouted running towards the women who spoke. Five newcomers stood a distance away from the readers, three women and two men. Harry had followed his sister and he and Taylor were hugging the new comers, all of whom were still in shock.

Sirius was just about to ask what was going on and who the new people were when the memory started.

"_Hey guys." An eight year old Taylor said as she let herself into the loft._

"Where's this?" Hermione asked.

"London." Harry answered smiling from his place next to the youngest of the newcomers.

_She smiled at her brother who was playing cards with five other people. A fourteen year old called Alexandra, although she preferred Alex or Lexi, she was of average height, with long wavy brown hair and lovely blue eyes, a sixteen year old called Nikita, she was tall for her age and beautiful, with tanned skin long, straight brown hair and big wide brown eyes, a seventeen year old called Amanda, who again was stunning, she had medium length brownie-blonde hair, green eyes and a lovely smile. There were two boys with them too, a seventeen year old called Richard, or Rick as he preferred, who had short brown hair, a kind face and lovely grey eyes, and lastly a seventeen year old called Michael, Mikey or Mike, who had a tough look on his face and look as though he rarely smiled, he had blacky-brown short spikey hair and green eyes, he was muscly too._

"_Hey sweetie." Amanda said. "Want us to deal you in? We're playing fish."_

"What's fish?" Sirius asked.

"A card game, we'll show you later." Taylor told him watching the memory with a huge grin on her face. She remembered this.

_Taylor smiled, she like Amanda this rag-tag group were her and Harry's only family. Alex, the playful older sister, Nikita, the overprotective, will do anything for you, older sister, Amanda, the mum of the group, Richard the dad of the group and Michael, the fiercely over protective big brother, the kind of protectiveness that would ward of future boyfriend of girlfriends from anyone in the group._

"_Please." Taylor answered, taking a seat between Amanda and Richard._

"_When do you two have to get back to Privet Drive?" Alex asked around a lollipop._

"_They've gone on holiday for a week." Harry said. "They left on Sunday, so they won't be back for four more days. We don't need to be there until they get back, we made sure to finish all our chores before we came down here."_

"You stayed there by yourselves for three days?!" Lily asked outraged.

"Two." Harry told his mum.

"And only one night." Taylor added trying to calm her down.

"_I still hate that we have to send you back there."_

"Me too." Sirius growled.

_Michael groaned. "Alex got any fours?"_

_Alex shook her head. "Go fish, but we gotta send 'em back and it's not like we don't see 'em everyday they come here on the first train of the day and leave on the last._

"You get the train by yourselves?" Tonks asked. "And how did you pay?"

"Of course we did, we know Surrey like the back of our hands and the train station isn't far from Privet Drive and when we reach London one of these guys were waiting for us." Harry answered.

"And long story short we didn't pay, we made ourselves invisible. We didn't know it was magic, what we did was close our eyes and wish not to be seen. Always worked." Taylor smiled.

_Amanda any Queens?"_

"_Go fish Lexi." Amanda answered. "You both should really try and go to school,_

"You didn't go to Primary school?" Hermione asked outraged. "How did you learn? You need a good education."

"All will be explained." Harry answered mysteriously.

_Harry any fours." She continued winking at Michael._

"_Nope 'Manda. Why do we need to go to school? You guys teach us everything. Heck, we're doing simple Algebra and I know for a fact we don't learn that at school yet._

"We were taught by these." Taylor gestured at the group of Muggles.

_Any Kings Tay?"_

"_Go fish Har, and he's right y'know. You guys are like geniuses, why do we need school when you're making sure we know it all and then some? I doubt primary school teaches us how to kick butt like Niki and Mike do. Any four Amanda?" _

"_To socialize with people your own age."_

"She has a point." Fleur said. Amanda smiled at her.

_Amanda told the twins as she handed over a four to Taylor._

"_They don't like us anyways, Dud made sure to that." Taylor said. "Mike do you have any fours?" She asked him in a sickly sweet voice. He grumbled and muttered about how it wasn't fair but the huge smile on his face told everyone otherwise as he handed Taylor two fours. "Thanks Mikey I got a full house." She beamed at him._

"Never could say no to you and Lexi." Mike mumbled.

_The game of fish continued with them all making small talk before it ended with a draw between Taylor and Alex._

"We won!" Taylor and Alex shouted childishly, high-fiving each other.

"_Alright funs over." Amanda started. "You two," She said pointing at the twins, "Will be going with Mike and Niki to go over your hand to hand combat,_

"Why'd you need that?" James asked. The twins stiffened and paled but refused to answer.

"It can never hurt to be prepared." Remus shrugged.

"I'd rather them know it and not need it, then need it and not know it." Lily said.

_Lex you're with me and we're gonna do some Maths and Rick can you go to the shop and get us some food? A pudding too, these youngsters deserve a treat."_

Taylor rolled her eyes but smiled widely as Amanda hugged her.

_Everyone nodded and went about their tasks._

_Harry went to train with Mike and Taylor, Nikita._

"_Okay Har, we're doing knives again today, don't worry remember this is a toy one, I'm gonna come at you and you're going to block me with the patterns and forms I showed you last week." Michael said, Harry nodded, he knew what to do. Michael thrust the knife forward and Harry moved his arms as if he was going to clap, one hand landing on the back of Mikes hand and the other his wrist, effectively making the knife fly out of Mikes hand._

"That was AMAZING!" The twins yelled their faces showed their awe of the move.

Harry blushed. "Thanks." He mumbled.

"_Good kid." Michael praised before collecting the knife and going for Harry again, smiling as Harry relaxed and got ready to give him a good fight._

"_We're going to work on you're dodging." Nikita told Taylor whilst she was putting on some boxing gloves. "I'm gonna throw some punches and kicks at you and you're either going to dodge or block. That okay?" She finished as they hit the padded area of the loft._

"That's a handy skill." Tonks nodded, smiling at Nikita trying to make her feel welcome.

_Taylor nodded her face a mask of concentration. Nikita swung for her head but Taylor ducked, as she popped back up Nikita brought her hand back going to back hand her across the hand. Taylor brought her hands up and blocked the hit with her forearms. Nikita then did a three sixty spin and stuck her leg out, in hopes of knocking the red head of off her feet. Taylor saw this and jumped up over her feet before landing._

"Awesome!" The twins said slowly as everyone watched the scene in awe. Their eyes darting from Harry avoiding a knife with well-practiced ease and Taylor dodging and blocking punches and kicks.

"_You're doing good Tay, lets speed this up a bit." Nikita smiled and their dance continued at a faster speed._

_The lessons went on for an hour before Taylor and Harry swapped trainers and Alex moved onto Science. By the time Harry and Taylor were done they were panting and sweating._

Mouths were hanging open, the twins had just shown amazing talent at such a young age, both of them taking it so seriously as though they had once needed these skills but didn't have them and refused to be back in that situation, both doing it as if it were a necessity of life. The question was, why?

"_You two did great today." Nikita smiled at them. "We're really proud of you."_

"_She's right you'll be better than us one day." Michael praised. "Go shower and put on some comfy clothes, we're going to have a lazy night tonight and watch some movies."_

"One of the best days of my life." Harry and Taylor said as the memory faded away leaving them in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place.

"How did you all meet?" Dumbledore asked.

"We grew up in foster care together." Amanda started referring to her, Michael, Richard, Nikita and Alex. "We bounced around from home to home, never really landing in a good one until we all decided we had enough and ran away. Mikes grandma left him a ton of money in her will, the only reason he was in the system was because he had no family left and he bought the loft. We made it into a home for all of us."

"We met when we ran away from the Dursleys." Taylor began. "We were six and we made ourselves invisible and hopped onto the first train we saw that took us to Kings Cross."

"It was the last train of the night so it was real late and we stumbled into an alleyway." Harry continued the story. "Some older guys decided to try beat us up and take the few things we bought with us. As we were trying to get away we ran into these and Niki and Mikey kicked ass and the guys left us alone."

"They took us to a twenty four hour restaurant and got us something to eat, we went back to the loft with them after we told them we weren't going back to the Dursleys as they were awful people, and since then we've been like one big family." Taylor finished.

"How come you never mentioned them to us?" Ron asked.

"When Hagrid came to get us he told us the story about us beating Voldemort, and about his followers." Harry began.

"We figured that some would've not got caught or there were people that never became Death Eaters but supported his ideals." Taylor added.

"So we decided to keep them a secret."

"To protect them."

"And it really was needed. Imagine if Voldemort found out about them, he come after them and kidnap them to get to us."

"And it would work, we'd run straight to him and offer ourselves instead." Taylor finished. Ron nodded. Harry and Taylor then introduced their adoptive family to the others in the room and quickly explained why they were here.

After all was explained and understood Kingsley spoke in his soothing voice and volunteered to read.

**A/N: Hope you enjoyed this chapter. There will be plenty more memories of the twins with the others and also why they find it necessary to learn self-defence. Don't forget to leave me a review! :D**


	7. Chapter 4

**A/N: Hi guys hope you all enjoy this chapter!**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

Kingsley had offered to read this chapter in hopes that his calming voice would make this experience a little less horrendous then it needed to be.

**Wormtail approached the twins, who scrambled to find their feet, to support their own weight before the ropes were untied. Wormtail raised his new silver hand, pulled out the wad of material gagging Harry and Taylor, and then, with one swipe, cut through the bonds tying the twins to the gravestone.**

"Run." Alex whispered knowing full well that the twins couldn't.

**There was a split second, perhaps, when the twins might have considered running for it,**

"Only a split second?" Fred joked.

**but Taylors injured leg shook under her**

"I forgot about your leg." Tonks whispered wondering how the Potter twins got out of this one alive.

**as she stood on the overgrown grave, as the Death Eaters closed ranks, forming a tighter circle around her, Harry and Voldemort, so that the gaps where the missing Death Eaters should have stood were filled. Wormtail walked out of the circle to the place where Cedric's body lay and returned with the twins wands, which he thrust roughly into their hands without looking at them. Then Wormtail resumed his place in the circle of watching Death Eaters.**

**"You have been taught how to duel. Potters?"**

"Not really." The twins interrupted.

**said Voldemort softly, his red eyes glinting through the darkness.**

**At these words the twins remembered, as though from a former life, the dueling club at Hogwarts they had attended briefly two years ago. ... All they had learned there was the Disarming Spell, "Expelliarmus". . . and what use would it be to deprive Voldemort of his wand, even if they could, when they were surrounded by Death Eaters, outnumbered by at least thirty to two?**

"Don't remind me." Lily, James, Sirius, Remus, Amanda, Nikita, Michael and Richard all moaned.

**They had never learned anything that could possibly fit them for this. They knew they were facing the thing against which Moody had always warned . . . the unblockable Avada Kedavra curse - and Voldemort was right - their mother was not here to die for them this time. ... They were quite unprotected. . .**

"You'll get through it." Ron said. "You'll survive, if you didn't, well, you wouldn't be Harry and Taylor Potter."

**"We bow to each other. Harry, Taylor" said Voldemort, bending a little, but keeping his snakelike face upturned to the twins. "Come, the niceties must be observed. . . Dumbledore would like you to show manners. . . . Bow to death, Harry, Taylor. . ."**

The colour left everyone's faces. "He's playing with you." Fleur whispered disgustedly.

**The Death Eaters were laughing again.**

"Of course you can laugh as the fourteen year olds get tortured!" Nikita fumed, Taylor being next to her took one hand into hers and whispered into her ear that her and Harry were fine and they survived.

**Voldemorts lipless mouth was smiling. The twins did not bow. They were not going to let Voldemort play with them before killing them ... they were not going to give him that satisfaction. . .**

"Gryffindors." Several people muttered fondly, knowing if they were where the twins were that they wouldn't have survived.

**"I said, bow," Voldemort said, raising his wand - and the twins felt their spines curve as though a huge, invisible hand were bending them ruthlessly forward, and the Death Eaters laughed harder than ever.**

"I'll kill them." Sirius snarled as Remus growled, both looking ready to go on a killing spree.

**"Very good," said Voldemort softly, and as he raised his wand the pressure bearing down upon the twins lifted too. "And now you face me, like brave Gryffindors . . . straight-backed and proud, the way your father died. . . And now - we duel."**

Gasps were heard from all around the room, he really was going to duel them.

**Voldemort raised his wand, and before the twins could do anything to defend themselves, before they could even move, Harry had been hit by the Cruciatus Curse. The pain was so intense, so all-consuming, that he no longer knew where he was. . . . White-hot knives were piercing every inch of his skin, his head was surely going to burst with pain, he was screaming more loudly than he'd ever screamed in his life**

Harry shuddered and Alex, who was sat next to him, grabbed hold of his hand as tightly as she could.

**-And then it stopped. Taylor had thrown a Confringo at Voldemort in hopes of ending the torture her brother was being put through.**

"Thanks." Harry muttered.

"As if I was going to let him hurt you." Taylor told him.

Other people in the room were looking at Taylor slack jawed, she was fighting back, protecting her brother and was clearly not terrified of the greatest Dark Lord since Grindelwald.

**Harry rolled over and scrambled to his feet; he was shaking as uncontrollably as Wormtail had done when his hand had been cut off; he staggered sideways into the wall of watching Death Eaters, and they pushed him away, back toward Voldemort.**

"At least they only pushed me." Harry shrugged.

**"A little break," said Voldemort, the slit-like nostrils dilating with excitement, "a little pause . . . That hurt, didn't it. Harry? Yours as well Taylor? You don't want me to do that again, do you? Although Taylor it would seem you know how to fight, maybe you would like some more pain?"**

"Try it." The twins whispered.

"Harry and Taylor eat pain for breakfast." The W twins said, ignoring the Potter twins eye roles.

**The twins didn't answer. They were going to die like Cedric, those pitiless red eyes were telling them so ... they were going to die, and there was nothing they could do about it... but they weren't going to play along. They weren't going to obey Voldemort... they were not going to beg. . .**

"You thought you were going to die?" Amanda asked looking heart broken, she couldn't protect them.

Harry nodded and Taylor hugged her. "We didn't though, so everything is fine. No need to worry." Taylor lied, nothing was fine, her and Harry were now broken and they were just getting over what had happened in their childhood.

**"I asked you whether you want me to do that again," said Voldemort softly. "Answer me! Imperio"**

"NO!" The older wizards and witches shouted.

"What's the problem?" Ginny asked. "We know they can fight the Imperious."

"This is You-Know-Who's." Flitwick told her. "He's powerful, his will be a lot stronger."

**And the twins felt, for the third time in their lives, the sensation that their mind had been wiped of all thought. . . . Ah, it was bliss, not to think, it was as though they were floating, dreaming ...just answer no ... say no ... just answer no. .. .**

"You're fighting it." Flitwick gasped.

**I will not, said a stronger voice, in the back of their heads, I won't answer. . .**

**Just answer no. . . .**

**I won't do it, I won't say it. ...**

**Just answer no. . . .**

**"I WON'T!"**

"You threw it off." Sprout whispered in awe.

**And these words burst from the twins mouths; they echoed through the graveyard, and the dream state was lifted as suddenly as though cold water had been thrown over them - back rushed the aches that the Cruciatus Curse had left all over their bodies - back rushed the realization of where they were, and what they were facing. . .**

"I think I would've preferred the Imperious." Alex said to herself.

**"You won't?" said Voldemort quietly, and the Death Eaters were not laughing now.**

"Of course they aren't." Moody said in a happy voice, well as happy as he could get. "You're the first to ever throw off his Imperio. Good kids."

**"You won't say no? Harry, Taylor, obedience is a virtue I need to teach you both before you die. . . Perhaps another little dose of pain?"**

"Leave them alone." Lily and James seethed.

**Voldemort raised his wand, but this time the twins were ready; with the reflexes born of his Quidditch training**

"See 'Mione, Quidditch is good." Harry teased but his book-worm friend was too worried to rise to this bait.

**and Taylors avoiding of fists,**

"What fists?!" Several people yelled.

"Training with Niki and Mikey." Taylor said, it wasn't a complete lie, she did avoid their punches, but they weren't the only ones, or the first.

**they flung themselves sideways onto the ground; they rolled behind the marble headstone of Voldemort s father, and they heard it crack as the curse missed them.**

**"We are not playing hide-and-seek, Harry, Taylor," said Voldemort's soft, cold voice, drawing nearer, as the Death Eaters laughed. "You cannot hide from me. Does this mean you are tired of our duel? Does this mean that you would prefer me to finish it now, Potters?**

"Nope, I'd prefer old age to get me." Taylor said ignoring the fact that that was clearly not how she died, Tom finally got her, her luck ran out eventually.

"**Come out, Harry. Come out, Taylor . . . come out and play, then ... it will be quick ... it might even be painless ... I would not know... I have never died. . .**

"It's painless." Lily and James both said, they remembered their deaths, the curse didn't hurt, you just died. As simple as that.

**don't run now Potters, I want to see the lights leave your eyes as I kill you!"**

"He's still toying with you." Fleur said looking pale and as though she was about to be sick.

"Don't worry." Harry tried to appease her. "We're fine."

**The twins crouched behind the headstone and knew the end had come. There was no hope ... no help to be had. And as they heard Voldemort draw nearer still, they knew one thing only, and it was beyond fear**

"You weren't scared?" Alex asked.

"Not at that moment, we accepted that we were going to die." The twins both shrugged, leaving everyone shocked. How could they act so nonchalant at this?!

**or reason: They were not going to die crouching here like children playing hide-and-seek; they were not going to die kneeling at Voldemort's feet... they were going to die upright like their father,**

James looked sadly proud.

**and they were going to die trying to defend themselves, even if no defence was possible. . .**

"You are both true Gryffindors." Dumbledore said. "Godric would be proud."

**The twins looked each other in the eyes, conveying their love for one another and their goodbyes. Both of them ready to die, but die fighting.**

There was not a dry eye in the room, well Snapes were dry but come on did you really expect him to cry? Harry and Taylor were looking each other in the eye again remembering that night, and there silent goodbyes, remembering how close to death they were and how willingly the accepted it.

**Before Voldemort could stick his snakelike face around the headstone. The twins stood up ... they gripped their wands tightly in their hands, thrust it out in front of them, and threw themselves around the headstone, facing Voldemort.**

"No fear." Charlie whispered to Bill.

"**Join me Taylor Potter, be my Dark Lady, be mine and I promise you will survive tonight."**

"You didn't tell us that." Hermione said.

"Nor did you tell me." Dumbledore said in his grandfatherly tone.

"Does it matter? He's asked me to be his Dark Lady since I was eleven, each time I've given him the same answer. Each time I will give him the same answer." Taylor got out through ground teeth. No one was supposed to know what he offered her.

**Taylor shook her head.**

The W twins cheered.

"**No smart words Taylor?"**

"Give her a minute." Nikita, Michael and Harry said.

"**Screw you Daddy issues."**

"Are you asking to be killed?!" Sirius yelled.

"He was going to try kill me anyway. Insulting him wasn't going to change that fact." Taylor muttered.

"**You will show me the respect I deserve or I will step on you like I did your Mudblood mother!" He hissed.**

"How dare he!" People yelled. How dare he insult the twins mother in front of them.

**Taylor spat towards his feet.**

"Insane." Everyone said.

"**There's the respect you deserve you Pure-blood wannabe."**

There were no words to describe the shock and awe everyone was feeling. Brave people insulted Voldemort behind his back with people they knew would never betray them and here was a fourteen year old insulting him as if he was nothing.

**Voldemort was livid at Taylor and ready to kill. As Harry shouted, "Expelliarmus!"**

"First spell that came to mind." Harry told everyone.

**and Taylor "Defodio!"**

Taylor shrugged. "Thought if by some miracle I manage to hit him it'll hurt."

**Voldemort cried, "Avada Kedavra!"**

Gasps.

**A jet of green light issued from Voldemort's wand just as a jet of red light blasted from Harry's and white from Taylor – the three beams met in midair - and suddenly the twins wands were vibrating as though an electric charge were surging through it; their hands seized up around it; they couldn't have released it if they'd wanted to - and a narrow beam of light connected the three wands, neither red nor green nor white, but bright, deep gold. Harry and Taylor following the beams with their astonished gazes, saw that Voldemort's long white fingers too were gripping a wand that was shaking and vibrating.**

"So confused." Harry said remembering his and Taylors shock, he winced at his now numb hand. Alex had a really really strong grip.

**And then - nothing could have prepared the twins for this**

"Nothing could've prepared us for anything that happened that night." Taylor said.

**- they felt their feet lift from the ground. The twins and Voldemort were all being raised into the air, their wands still connected by that thread of shimmering golden light. They glided away from the tombstone of Voldemort's father and then came to rest on a patch of ground that was clear and free of graves. . . . The Death Eaters were shouting; they were asking Voldemort for instructions; they were closing in, reforming the circle around Harry, Taylor and Voldemort, the snake slithering at their heels, some of them drawing their wands -The golden thread connecting Harry, Taylor and Voldemort splintered; though the wands remained connected, a thousand more beams arced high over Taylor, Harry and Voldemort, crisscrossing all around them, until they were enclosed in a golden, dome-shaped web, a cage of light, beyond which the Death Eaters circled like jackals, their cries strangely muffled now. . .**

"What's happening?" Tonks asked worriedly.

**"Do nothing!" Voldemort shrieked to the Death Eaters, and the twins saw his red eyes wide with astonishment at what was happening, saw him fighting to break the thread of light still connecting his wand with Harry and Taylor's; the twins held onto their wands more tightly, with both hands, and the golden thread remained unbroken. "Do nothing unless I command you!" Voldemort shouted to the Death Eaters.**

"What a family." Taylor muttered sarcastically.

**And then an unearthly and beautiful sound filled the air. ... It was coming from every thread of the light-spun web vibrating around Harry, Taylor and Voldemort. It was a sound the twins recognized, though they had heard it only once before in their lives: phoenix song.**

"Our cores." Harry said, confusing most people in the room.

**It was the sound of hope to the twins**

"It gave us strength." Taylor admitted. Nikita and Amanda's grip tightened on her hand.

**. . . the most beautiful and welcome thing they had ever heard in their lives. . . . they felt as though the song were inside them instead of just around them. ... It was the sound they connected with Dumbledore,**

Dumbledore smiled sadly at them, glad that he could help them when he physically couldn't.

**and it was almost as though a friend were speaking in their ear. . .**

**Don't break the connection.**

**We know. The twins told the music, we know we mustn't. . . but no sooner had they thought it, than the thing became much harder to do. Their wands began to vibrate more powerfully than ever . . . and now the beam between them and Voldemort changed too ... it was as though large beads of light were sliding up and down the thread connecting the wands – the twins felt their wands give a shudder under their hands as the light beads began to slide slowly and steadily their way. . . . The direction of the beams movement was now toward them, from Voldemort, and they felt their wands shudder angrily. . .**

"A battle of wills." Dumbledore said.

**As the closest bead of light moved nearer to Harry and Taylor's wand tip, the wood beneath their fingers grew so hot they feared it would burst into flame. The closer that bead moved, the harder the twins wands vibrated; they were sure their wands would not survive contact with it; it felt as though it was about to shatter under their fingers -They concentrated every last particle of their minds upon forcing the bead back toward Voldemort, their ears full of phoenix song, their eyes furious, fixed . . . and slowly, very slowly, the beads quivered to a halt, and then, just as slowly, they began to move the other way . . . and it was Voldemort's wand that was vibrating extra-hard now . . . Voldemort who looked astonished, and almost fearful. . . and Taylor couldn't help but smirk.**

"Of course you couldn't." Harry sighed and the Muggles in the room laughed a shaky laugh.

**One of the beads of light was quivering, inches from the tip of Voldemorts wand. The twins didn't understand why they were doing it, didn't know what it might achieve . . . but they now concentrated as they had never done in their lives on forcing that bead of light right back into Voldemort's wand . . . and slowly . . . very slowly ... it moved along the golden thread ... it trembled for a moment. . . and then it connected. . .**

"WOOOH!" The teenagers in the room cheered. They had no idea what was going to happen now the twins had won the battle of wills they just knew it was a good thing.

**At once, Voldemorts wand began to emit echoing screams of pain . . . then - Voldemort's red eyes widened with shock - a dense, smoky hand flew out of the tip of it and vanished . . . the ghost of the hand he had made Wormtail. . . more shouts of pain . . . and then something much larger began to blossom from Voldemorts wand tip, a great, grayish something, that looked as though it were made of the solidest, densest smoke. ... It was a head . . . now a chest and arms . . . the torso of Cedric Diggory.**

"That must've been awful." Richard gasped annoyed that even though he tries hard to protect the twins he couldn't.

**If ever the twins might have released their wands from shock, it would have been then, but instinct kept them clutching their wands tightly, so that the thread of golden light remained unbroken, even though the thick gray ghost of Cedric Diggory (was it a ghost? it looked so solid) emerged in its entirety from the end of Voldemort s wand, as though it were squeezing itself out of a very narrow tunnel. . . and this shade of Cedric stood up, and looked up and down the golden thread of light, and spoke.**

**"Hold on. Harry, Taylor," it said.**

"Like we could let go." Harry said.

"I felt like my wand was being melded to my hand." Taylor continued.

**Its voice was distant and echoing. The twins looked at Voldemort ... his wide red eyes were still shocked ... he had no more expected this than they had . . . and, very dimly the twins heard the frightened yells of the Death Eaters, prowling around the edges of the golden dome. .**

**More screams of pain from the wand . . . and then something else emerged from its tip ... the dense shadow of a second head, quickly followed by arms and torso ... an old man the twins had seen only in a dream was now pushing himself out of the end of the wand just as Cedric had done . . . and his ghost, or his shadow, or whatever it was, fell next to Cedric's, and surveyed Harry, Taylor and Voldemort, and the golden web, and the connected wands, with mild surprise, leaning on his walking stick. . . .**

**"He was a real wizard, then?" the old man said, his eyes on Voldemort. "Killed me, that one did. . . You fight him, you two . . ."**

"Trying to." Harry said, everyone else apart from those who knew the full details of the night, Dumbledore, Sirius, Harry, Taylor and the Muggles, were too shocked to speak.

**But already, yet another head was emerging ... and this head, grey as a smoky statue, was a woman's. . . . the twins, both arms shaking now as they fought to keep their wands still, saw her drop to the ground and straighten up like the others, staring. . .**

**The shadow of Bertha Jorkins surveyed the battle before her with wide eyes.**

"She was always nice." Tonks said sadly.

**"Don't let go, now!" she cried, and her voice echoed like Cedrics as though from very far away. "Don't let him get you, Taylor, Harry - don't let go!"**

"We won't." Taylor said.

**She and the other two shadowy figures began to pace around the inner walls of the golden web, while the Death Eaters flitted around the outside of it... and Voldemort's dead victims whispered as they circled the duelers, whispered words of encouragement to Harry and Taylor, and hissed words the twins couldn't hear to Voldemort.**

"We would not have survived without them." The twins said.

**And now another head was emerging from the tip of Voldemorts wand . . . and the twins knew when they saw it who it would be ... they knew, as though they had expected it from the moment when Cedric had appeared from the wand . . . knew, because the man appearing was the one they'd thought of more than any other tonight. . .**

"Me." James whispered sadly, his wife grabbing hold of his hand to comfort him.

**The smoky shadow of a tall man with untidy hair fell to the ground as Bertha had done, straightened up, and looked at them . . . and the twins, their arms shaking madly now, looked back into the ghostly face of their father.**

**"Your mother's coming . . ." he said quietly. "She wants to see you ... it will be all right.. . hold on..."**

"We weren't about to stop, don't think we could if we tried." Harr said smiling sadly at his parents, tears in his eyes.

**And she came. . . first her head, then her body... a young woman with long hair, the smoky, shadowy form of Lily Potter, an older version of Taylor,**

Both Lily and Taylor smiled. Taylor really did look like a carbon copy of her mother.

**blossomed from the end of Voldemort's wand, fell to the ground, and straightened like her husband. She walked in between the twins, looking down at them, and she spoke in the same distant, echoing voice as the others, but quietly, so that Voldemort, his face now livid with fear as his victims prowled around him, could not hear. . **

**"When the connection is broken, we will linger for only moments . . . but we will give you time. . . you must get to the Portkey, it will return you to Hogwarts ... do you understand, Taylor, Harry?"**

Lily smiled, glad that her and James helped their babies from beyond the grave.

**"Yes," They gasped, fighting now to keep a hold on their wands, which were slipping and sliding beneath their fingers.**

"They were alive." The twins moaned.

**"Harry, Taylor . . ." whispered the figure of Cedric, "take my body back, will you? Take my body back to my parents,"**

"I was planning on." Taylor said, guilt evident on her face.

**"We will," said the twins, their faces screwed up with the effort of holding their wands.**

**"Do it now," whispered their father's voice, "be ready to run . . . do it now. . ."**

**"NOW!" Taylor yelled; the twins didn't think they could have held on for another moment anyway -they pulled their wands upward with an almighty wrench, and the golden thread broke; the cage of light vanished, the phoenix song died - but the shadowy figures of Voldemort's victims did not disappear - they were closing in upon Voldemort, shielding the twins from his gaze -And the twins ran as they had never run in their lives, knocking two stunned Death Eaters aside as they passed; they zigzagged behind headstones, feeling their curses following them, hearing them hit the headstones - they were dodging curses and graves, pelting toward Cedric's body, Taylor no longer aware of the pain in her leg, her whole being concentrated on what she had to do -**

"Good girl, ignore pain. It'll get you nowhere." Moody's gruff voice praised.

**"Stun them!" They heard Voldemort scream.**

**Ten feet from Cedric, they dived behind a marble angel to avoid the jets of red light and saw the tip of its wing shatter as the spells hit it. Gripping their wands more tightly, they dashed out from behind the angel –**

**"Impedimenta!" Harry bellowed, pointing his wand wildly over his shoulder at the Death Eaters running at him.**

"**Depulso!" Taylor yelled, firing blindly hoping to hit someone.**

"Keep running." Tonks said.

"Keep throwing curses too." Sirius interjected.

**From the muffled yelps, they thought they had stopped at least two of them, but there was no time to stop and look; they jumped over the cup and dived as they heard more wand blasts behind them; more jets of light flew over their heads as they fell, stretching out their hands to grab Cedric's arms...**

**"Stand aside! I will kill them! They are mine!"**

"This obsession is not healthy." Harry began.

"And you should really get help." Taylor finished.

**shrieked Voldemort.**

"Like a girl." Harry, Taylor and Alex said.

**The twins hands had closed on Cedric's wrists; one tombstone stood between them and Voldemort, but Cedric was too heavy to carry, and the cup was out of reach -Voldemort's red eyes flamed in the darkness. The twins saw his mouth curl into a smile, saw him raise his wand.**

**"Accio!" Harry yelled, pointing his wand at the Triwizard Cup. It flew into the air and soared toward the twins. Harry caught it by one handle and Taylor the other -They heard Voldemort's scream of fury at the same moment that they felt the jerk behind their navels that meant the Portkey had worked - it was speeding them away in a whirl of wind and colour, and Cedric along with them. . . . They were going back.**

"And you're safe." People sighed in relief.

"Not yet." Harry countered.

"There's still a Death Eater at school that wants us dead." Taylor told them. Well no one could say the twins years at school were not interesting. A blinding white light signalled the beginning of a new memory. Hopefully a good one.

**A/N: Hey guys! Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please don't forget to review, they really mean the world to us writers. :D**


	8. A memory

**A/N: So here is another memory and just for **_**WITHINTEMPTATION1992**_** it is with the Dursleys! Hope you enjoy it :D.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

"_You fucking worthless freaky bitch!"_

Everyone gasped at the language and wondered what was going on, everyone except Taylor and Harry who looked like they were about to have a panic aattack.

"STOP!" They screamed. "KATE BECKETT YOU STOP THIS MEMORY RIGHT NOW! STOP IT!" They chorused repeating 'Stop it' over and over again.

_Vernon Dursley yelled before grabbing a hold of small, frail, nine year old Taylor and throwing her at and straight through the Patio doors._

Sirius growled and ran at the obese man in hopes to tackle and hurt him but he went right through. Harry and Taylor had collapsed unceremoniously on the floor, they remembered this night. The night Taylor finally snapped. Alex and Nikita noticed the twins and rushed off to them, Alex comforting Harry and Nikita, Taylor, both whispering that it would be okay.

_Little Taylor was unconscious before she even hit the ground, covered in cuts, bruises and her own blood._

"What's he doing?!" Lily panicked, "Why is he doing this?!" But the twins were in no state to answer them.

"_TAYLOR!" Harry shouted running for his twin sister only to be grabbed around the stomach by his fuming uncle and thrown into the wall._

"Stop it! Make him stop!" Ginny screeched. Everyone watching was a horrible shade of pale, this was not normal abuse, this was going to the extremes, it was like Vernon didn't even care that he could kill them.

"_You and your whore of a sister are going to regret the day you were born after this." Vernon seethed punching Harry in the gut._

Harry winced and curled further into Alex who was running a hand through his thick hair.

"_We already do." Harry ground out, looking worriedly over to his sister, not knowing if she was alive or not._

"I thought she was dead." Harry whispered brokenly and Alex tightened her grip on him.

_Back chatting Vernon Dursley when he was in a mood like this was never a good thing but Taylor and Harry never cared. This pig had been beating on them from day one, they were used to it, they could handle pain, and their sarcastic witty comments made them feel stronger, less affected by the abuse. Vernon was now very, very angry, the vein in his forehead was pulsating, his face was purple and if he were a cartoon character he would've had smoke coming from his ears, he picked up the frying pan from on top of the stove and smacked Harry over the hand, he didn't care that the pan had only just been used and was still scolding hot as he continued to smack Harry with it. When his arms got tired he started to kick the poor boy in the ribs._

"Get off my son!" James yelled as if he could make anything change.

_Harry supposed he should be relieved that he was only getting this, Taylor was being whipped by a belt before she was thrown through the doors. In fact the belt still laid on the kitchen floor with her scarlet blood staining it._

"The belt." Hermione whispered, she quickly put two and two together as she noticed the lashes on Taylor earlier. "He used it on Taylor.

_Harry was biting his lip to stop himself crying out in pain, he and Taylor never did, they never let the Dursleys know that they were winning and slowly breaking them. Heck the twins wouldn't be surprised if one day they snapped and killed the Dursleys in their sleep. It was bound to happen, after all, they could only handle so much._

"_You better be glad the girl's dead." Vernon smirked. "Otherwise she'd be doing her job. Once a whore always a whore and her job is to lay on her fucking back and take it."_

"What's he talking about?" McGonagall asked looking as though she was about to be sick. Taylors whole body was shacking and Nikita couldn't get her to calm down, Amanda rushed over to help, she didn't want to see this.

_He then continued to beat the living day lights out of Harry, and do you know why? Why Vernon Dursley was beating up Harry and Taylor Potter? It's all because Harry accidentally dropped a glass, it didn't even break but Vernon never really needed an excuse to beat the crap out of Harry and Taylor. In fact his favourite reason to beat them was and to quote the oath of a man 'Just because'!_

_Taylor Potter's body felt as if it had been ran over by a truck, which then reversed back over her before speeding off again. Everything hurt and there was glass sticking in pretty much all of her, but she wasn't focused on that. Of course not. She could hear the sound of flesh smacking flesh, a fist smacking into somewhere fleshy, most likely a gut and she knew that it was her brother. Vernon had finished with her when she went through the window. Probably thought I was dead, she thought to herself and moved onto her poor brother who was taking the brunt of the man's anger now. Groaning she managed to force herself to sit up._

"She's okay." Sprout whispered relieved. Madam Pomfrey knew otherwise, the twins had not only been physically through hell but it mentally broke them, and emotionally scarred them. It was a good job they found the Muggles otherwise Taylor and Harry Potter would not be the children we know, she thought to herself. But then did anyone really know Harry and Taylor, they kept all this abuse to themselves, not once speaking out and by the looks on their Muggle friends faces they didn't know how bad it truly was. Could this be why they always rush of into dangerous situation, they don't trust adults anymore, they think their life is worth less than everybody else's? Well that's not surprising after all tell someone something enough and eventually they'll start to believe it. And the twins were always called good for nothing, worthless and anything else derogatory you can think of.

_She blinked, once, twice, three times and her vision slowly came back to her. She noticed a rather large, sharp piece of glass next to her and grabbed it tightly in her fist. The glass was cutting into her palm and she could feel the blood dripping steadily out of her newest cut but she didn't care. This abuse stopped. Now. _

Taylor traced over the scar on the palm of her right hand, she couldn't hear anyone else, she couldn't feel Amanda and Nikita touching her. It was like this scene wasn't a memory, her and Harry had been transported back to that night, they felt like they were living it all over again, they could feel every scrape, bruise, cut, everything. Stupid flash backs.

_Forcing herself to stand up, she paused as she wobbled on her feet. Extreme blood loss sucked! She unsteadily made her way towards her uncle and brother. Her aunt was in the kitchen too, watching her husband beat up her nephew but she didn't care, she lashed them with a belt too and her cousin Dudley was watching from the table, stuffing his face with crisps as per usual._

There wasn't a dry eye in the room, everyone was thinking the same thing. How could no one have noticed?

"_Stop it." Taylor said in a cold, calm voice as she pointed the large shard of glass at her uncle menacingly. "Touch him again and I'll fucking kill you."_

Gasps were heard all around the room but Taylors reaction wasn't really all that surprising. She was just trying to keep herself and her brother alive.

_She continued grabbing hold of the glass tighter, ignoring the woozy feeling that was washing over her as she tried not to sway too much._

"She needs to get to the hospital, both of them do." Pomfrey moaned.

_Vernon had stopped beating Harry and turned to look at his freak niece. "You wouldn't dare." He sneered taking a step towards her. _

"_Look in my eyes and tell me I wouldn't slit your throat and turn your pig of a son into bacon."_

If the situation wasn't so awful, if the scene wasn't so horrific and if Taylor didn't look like she was deadly serious the Weasley twins might have made a joke about what she said in reference to Dudley but even they were staring at the scene horrified at what their friends were going through.

_She said in the same calm voice as before. Vernon looked into Taylor's eyes and had to supress a shudder, her eyes were dead, once they shined bright with intelligence and beauty now they showed only pain and suffering and a strange determination. The determination that she would do anything to protect herself and her brother._

"_If you did you'd get your freak-self thrown into prison." He smirked._

She knew, Taylor knew what would happen if she went through with her threat, she just didn't care enough. Prison would've been nicer than life at number four Privet Drive.

"_Or would I? Little Taylor Potter who has already been through so much. Her and her brothers Parents dead,_

Lily and James winced.

_both of them kidnapped, drugged and turned into a slave,_

Questions were whizzing around everyone's head. Harry and Taylor never mentioned that they were kidnapped when they were younger. They wanted to know everything but none of them could bare to ask, they could only hope that Kate would show them in a memory, and even then they all shuddered to think of what they would see.

_and abused by their supposed family their whole lives and they haven't even hit double figures yet! I think they'd be more impressed it took one of us this long to snap."_

She was right, people that had been through a lot less had snapped, it really was a miracle that they hadn't before this, it was a miracle that they were both still alive really.

_She continued in her calm voice, her weapon never wavering, still pointed towards Vernon's throat. Harry had managed to drag himself up and over to his sister, he was now stood behind her as bloody and broken as she was._

"_They'd send you off to the asylum. You're fucking crazy."_

_Taylor laughed, a scary, hollow laugh. "Maybe I am, but you're the bastard that beats his niece and nephew._

Nine-year-old Taylor was really starting to scare at least ninety percent of the room, no nine year old should act like this, no nine year old should be this broken. What happened to Taylor and Harry before they got to Hogwarts? How much could've happened in ten years? And why did they never tell?

_You're the one who rapes them, when dear Petunia says no to you._

The twinkle in Dumbledore's eyes had long since been extinguished. He was responsible for this, he had put them there, not checked up on them. How could've he have been so foolish as to think Petunia would've looked after them as if they were her own? How could he think she would've ever got over her petty jealousy? He didn't. He knew the twins wouldn't have had the best childhood possible but he thought that Petunia would've cared for them at least a little bit and not let her monster of a husband do all of this to them. How very wrong he was.

_If I'm crazy, if me and Harry are freaks, then what the hell does that make you?"_

Good question. Just what did that make Vernon Dursley? Judging by the looks on everyone's faces that would make Vernon Dursley a dead man.

_She asked blinking away the black spots that were clouding her vision._

"_Tay we need to go." Harry whispered to his sister who was barely standing._

"Get out of there and don't ever go back." Tonks whispered knowing it was futile, the twins did go back there, she watched them this summer.

"_Me and Harry are leaving now. We will be back and if you touch us again I will hurt you." Taylor promised before her and Harry struggled to walk out of the house, Taylor still clutching the glass. The twins slowly but steadily made their way through Little Whinging, it was about three a.m. and no one was around to see them. _

Would anyone of cared anyway? The lies Petunia spread about those nasty, freaky Potter twins, they probably would've thought that they got into a fight and deserved the pain they were in.

_Finally they arrived and what looked like an abandoned building that stood alone, there were no houses or other buildings anywhere near it. The twins found it one day when they were running from Dudley and his gang. They both grimaced in pain as they climbed over the large fence but they continued to move on in silence._

They didn't need to talk, this wasn't the first time they had to seek refuge somewhere else, not the first time Vernon nearly beat them to death and sadly it wasn't the last.

_Harry opened the window and climbed in then reached out to help his sister who was practically dead on her feet. They walked up a flight of stairs and went into a room that had two sleeping bags, a quilt, several pillows and some snack food. The quilt and sleeping bags had blood stains on them, and the pillows were very thin._

"How often did you have to hide there?" Fleur asked sadly but again no answer was given.

"_C'mon Tay." Harry whispered looking into his sisters dead eyes. "Give me the glass Tay and go lay down, we'll sleep this off and we'll be fine in the morning." He continued in his soft, quiet voice, as he gently pried the glass shard out of Taylor's hand. _

Harry remembered that, the look in Taylor's eyes had scared him, there was nothing there, they were hollow, dead, empty, he truly thought that he might lose his sister that night. It had terrified him.

_Harry threw the weapon across the room and took hold of Taylors uninjured hand and led her to the makeshift bed they'd made the first time they had to seek refuge here for a night. They both laid down next to each other holding onto to one another for comfort._

Comfort that no child should ever have to seek, the comfort that you needed when you realised your family, your own flesh and blood did not care for you, would rather you be dead than alive, comfort the poor Potter twins had to seek out all of the time.

"_What're we gonna do Harry?" Taylor asked._

"Come stay with us." Richard said, he vowed to whomever was listening that as long as he was alive, his heart still beating, his lungs still taking in Oxygen he would never allow the twins to go back there. Ever.

"_We are going to sleep now, then in the morning, if were healed enough, we're going down to London and staying with the others for the rest of the week._

They had gone to London for a week after that. Their wounds magically healed by the morning, although they had left shallow, faint scars. They had slept for a total of twenty-four hours to heal but they always had to sleep for a long time when their magic healed them.

_Vernon isn't going to touch us like this again_

Never as bad, he beat them until they were unconscious but never again had he thrown them through windows and very nearly killed them.

_and we'll get through this like we always do." Harry answered softly._

"_What if we can't?" Taylor countered. "We can only survive so much, what if everything is finally getting to be too much?"_

Another good point and another conversation children should not be having. No child should ever wonder if the life they are living is becoming too much for them to handle.

"_We can survive it Tay, nothing is going to be too much for us as long as we have each other. If we can survive Vlad we can survive anything."_

Isn't it true? If they could survive a killing curse, beatings, kidnapping, drugs, slavery and a Dark Lord attempting to kill them all the time surely they can get through this? Maybe not be who they would've been if they had a happy childhood but they would survive. They'd be broken of course, not one hundred percent broken but enough for it to matter.

_Harry said with such conviction it was hard to not believe him._

It was a good job Taylor believed him too, they had survived, they managed to make it to eleven when a half giant came and saved them. Whisked them off to a magical world and Hogwarts. Even if they never made it into the magical world they had a plan, they only had to survive that specific circle of hell until they were sixteen, at sixteen they could legally leave and go live in London with the others.

"_M'kay. Night night Harry, love you." Taylor whispered before snuggling closer to her brother, gasping in pain, closing her eyes and trying to sleep through the worst of her pain._

"_Love you too Taylor. Love you too." Harry told his sleeping twin before settling himself for a pain filled night._

The memory ended with a bright light, there wasn't a dry eye in the room, even Snape looked appalled. Nikita, Amanda and Alex were still trying to comfort the twins as the adults all excused themselves, they were making plans, the Potter twins would never go back to Privet Drive and the Dursleys would be punished, and once the twins were okay, or maybe after the books were read and all the memories were seen they would all have a long talk about everything they had witnessed or read. The twins needed help, even if they would never ask for it.

**A/N: Hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Don't forget to review.**


	9. Chapter 5

**A/N: Thank you for the reviews, favourites and follows. I hope you enjoy this chapter.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

"After this chapter we shall take a break and reconvene in the morning." Dumbledore said as Remus took the book to read.

**The twins felt themselves slam flat into the ground; their faces pressed into the grass; the smell of it filled their nostrils. They had closed their eyes while the Portkey transported them, and they kept them closed now.**

"I don't blame them." Amanda whispered.

**They did not move.**

"Of course they didn't." Tonks muttered.

**All the breath seemed to have been knocked out of them; their heads were swimming so badly they felt as though the ground beneath them were swaying like the deck of a ship. To hold themselves steady, they tightened their holds on the two things they were still clutching: the smooth, cold handles of the Triwizard Cup and Cedric's body. They felt as though they would slide away into the blackness gathering at the edges of their brains if they let go of either of them.**

"Can't sleep yet." Moody said gruffly. "Things to do."

**Shock and exhaustion kept them on the ground, breathing in the smell of the grass, waiting . . . waiting for someone to do something . . . something to happen . . . and all the while, their scars burned dully on their foreheads. . .**

"Painful." Taylor said as Nikita death-gripped her hand.

**A torrent of sound deafened and confused them; there were voices everywhere, footsteps, screams. ... they remained where they were, their faces screwed up against the noise, as though it were a nightmare that would pass. . .**

"One can hope." Harry said blandly.

**Then a pair of hands seized them roughly and turned them over.**

**"Harry! Taylor!"**

**They opened their eyes.**

**They were looking up at the starry sky, and Albus Dumbledore was crouched over them. The dark shadows of a crowd of people pressed in around them, pushing nearer; the twins felt the ground beneath their heads reverberating with their footsteps.**

"Didn't make the killer headache any better." The twins said.

**They had come back to the edge of the maze. They could see the stands rising above them, the shapes of people moving in them, the stars above.**

**The twins let go of the cup, but they clutched Cedric to them even more tightly. Harry raised his free hand and seized Dumbledore's wrist and Taylor gripped hold of her brother, while Dumbledore's face swam in and out of focus.**

"It was a terrifying sight." McGonagall recalled. The twins had been through so much, nearly died every year but never had they looked so confused, so broken, so lost.

**"He's back," Harry whispered. "He's back. Voldemort."**

"**Couldn't stop him. Sorry." Taylor mumbled her eyes unfocused.**

"It was not your faults." Everyone said hoping to put an end to those thoughts.

**"What's going on? What's happened?"**

**The face of Cornelius Fudge appeared upside down over the twins; it looked white, appalled.**

**"My God - Diggory!" it whispered. "Dumbledore - he's dead!"**

**The words were repeated, the shadowy figures pressing in on them gasped it to those around them . . . and then others shouted it - screeched it - into the night - "He's dead!" "He's dead!" "Cedric Diggory! Dead!"**

**"Harry, Taylor let go of him," they heard Fudge's voice say, and they felt fingers trying to pry them from Cedric's limp body, but the twins wouldn't let him go. Then Dumbledore's face, which was still blurred and misted, came closer.**

**"Taylor, Harry, you can't help him now. It's over. Let go."**

**"He wanted us to bring him back," Harry muttered - it seemed important to explain this.**

**"He wanted us to bring him back to his parents. . ." Taylor continued.**

There was not a dry eye in the room, even Snape looked like he was holding back his tears. Taylor's hand was being gripped by Nikita and Harry's by Alex, both briefly wondered if they would need Poppy to reset their bones later on,

**"That's right. Harry, Taylor . . . just let go now. . ."**

**Dumbledore bent down, and with extraordinary strength for a man so old and thin,**

Dumbledore smiled all though it held no happiness.

**raised Harry from the ground and set -him on his feet. Harry swayed. His head was pounding. He did the same to Taylor, who immediately grabbed onto her brother, her injured leg would no longer support her weight.**

"I wasn't the most stable person for you to grab onto." Harry whispered to his sister who was next to him, taking a hold of her hand.

"You're my most stable person." She answered him softly.

**The crowd around them jostled, fighting to get closer, pressing darkly in on the twins - "What's happened?" "What's wrong with them?" "Diggory's dead!"**

**"They'll need to go to the hospital wing!" Fudge was saying loudly. "They're ill, injured - Dumbledore, Diggory's parents, they're here, they're in the stands. ..."**

**"I'll take the twins, Dumbledore, I'll take them-"**

**"No, I would prefer-"**

**"Dumbledore, Amos Diggorys running . . . he's coming over. . . . Don't you think you should tell him - before he sees - ?"**

**"Harry, Taylor, stay here -"**

"Hearing it from your point of view it is so much more confusing than it was for us." Ginny said and it was true the twins clearly had no idea what was happening, their minds sluggish and filled with grief and shock.

**Girls were screaming, sobbing hysterically... The scene flickered oddly before the twins eyes. . .**

**"It's all right, kids, I've got you . . . come on ... hospital wing . . ."**

**"Dumbledore said stay," said Taylor thickly, the pounding in their scars making them feel as though they were about to throw up; their vision was blurring worse than ever.**

Dumbledore looked angrily remembering how for the second time that night the twins had been taken away from him and nearly killed.

**"You both need to lie down**

"He's right there." Poppy sniffed.

**. . .. Come on now..."**

**Someone larger and stronger than the twins were was half pulling, half carrying them both through the frightened crowd. They heard people gasping, screaming, and shouting as the man supporting them pushed a path through them, taking them back to the castle. Across the lawn, past the lake and the Durmstrang ship, the twins heard nothing but the heavy breathing of the man helping them walk.**

**"What happened?" the man asked at last as he lifted the twins up the stone steps.**

**Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. It was Mad-Eye Moody.**

"Was not." The twins mumbled.

**"Cup was a Portkey," said Harry as they crossed the entrance hall. "Took us and Cedric to a graveyard . . . and Voldemort was there . . . Lord Voldemort..."**

**Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Up the marble stairs . . .**

**"The Dark Lord was there? What happened then?"**

**"Killed Cedric . . . they killed Cedric. . ." Taylor told him, the tone of her voice making it obvious that she still wasn't all there.**

"Neither was Harry." Taylor defended herself. Why did it only mention that her mind was the only one not there.

**"And then?"**

**Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Along the corridor . . .**

**"Made a potion . . . got his body back. . . ." Harry said numbly.**

**"The Dark Lord got his body back? He's returned?"**

**"And the Death Eaters came . . . and then we dueled. ..." Taylor shuddered.**

**"You dueled with the Dark Lord?"**

**"Got away . . . our wands . . . did something funny. ... we saw our mum and dad . . . they came out of his wand. ..."They answered together.**

Amanda smiled a sad smile. The twins went through hell yet still they were on the exact same page, they could still talk together and still talk to each other without saying a single word.

**"In here. Harry, Taylor ... in here, and sit down. . . . You'll be all right now . . . drink this. ..."**

**The twins heard a key scrape in a lock and felt a cup being pushed into their hands.**

**Drink it... you'll feel better . . . come on, now. Taylor, Harry, I need to know exactly what happened. ..."**

**Moody helped tip the stuff down Taylor's and then Harry's throat; they coughed, a peppery taste burning their throats. Moody's office came into sharper focus, and so did Moody himself. ... He looked as white as Fudge had looked, and his real eye was fixed unblinkingly upon Harry's face, whilst his magical one was on Taylor.**

"Was disconcerting." Harry muttered.

**"Voldemort's back? You're sure he's back? How did he do it?"**

**"He took stuff from his father's grave, and from Wormtail, and us," said Harry. The twins heads felt clearer; their scars weren't hurting so badly; they could now see Moody's face distinctly, even though the office was dark. They could still hear screaming and shouting from the distant Quidditch field.**

**"What did the Dark Lord take from you?" said Moody.**

**"Blood," said Harry, and Taylor raised her arm. Her sleeve was ripped where Wormtail's dagger had torn it.**

People hissed and it was clear Wormtail did not have long to live.

**Moody let out his breath in a long, low hiss.**

**"And the Death Eaters? They returned?"**

**"Yes," said Harry. "Loads of them . . ."**

**"How did he treat them?" Moody asked quietly. "Did he forgive them?"**

**But the twins weren't listening, they had suddenly remembered. They should have told Dumbledore, they should have said it straightaway -**

"Sorry." They mumbled guilt coursing through their bodies. Guilt which everyone else thought was stupid, they were apologising now when the only people in danger from the Death Eater was themselves.

**"There's a Death Eater at Hogwarts! There's a Death Eater here - they put our names in the Goblet of Fire, they made sure we got through to the end -"**

**The twins tried to get up, but Moody pushed them back down.**

**"I know who the Death Eater is," he said quietly.**

**"Karkaroff?" said Harry wildly. "Where is he? Have you got him? Is he locked up?"**

**"Karkaroff?" said Moody with an odd laugh. "Karkaroff fled tonight, when he felt the Dark Mark burn upon his arm. He betrayed too many faithful supporters of the Dark Lord to wish to meet them . . . but I doubt he will get far. The Dark Lord has ways of tracking his enemies."**

"But he sucks at killing them. See?" Fred said pointing at the twins trying to lighten the mood.

**"Karkaroff's gone? He ran away? But then - he didn't put our names in the goblet?"**

**"No," said Moody slowly. "No, he didn't. It was I who did that."**

**Harry heard, but didn't believe.**

"I wouldn't either." Loads of people said.

**"No, you didn't," Taylor said. "You didn't do that. . . you can't have done..."**

"My mind was finally catching up with me." Taylor admitted.

**"I assure you I did," said Moody, and his magical eye swung around and fixed upon the door, and the twins knew he was making sure that there was no one outside it. At the same time, Moody drew out his wand and pointed it at Harry and Taylor.**

"Would've gone for him if we didn't think he'd manage to hit one of us with an AK." Harry informed everyone.

**"He forgave them, then?" he said. "The Death Eaters who went free? The ones who escaped Azkaban?"**

**"What?" said Harry. He was looking at the wand Moody was pointing at him. This was a bad joke, it had to be.**

"Denial." Moody barked.

**"I asked you," said Moody quietly, "whether he forgave the scum who never even went to look for him. Those treacherous cowards who wouldn't even brave Azkaban for him. The faithless, worthless bits of filth who were brave enough to cavort in masks at the Quidditch World Cup, but fled at the sight of the Dark Mark when I fired it into the sky."**

"**You're not Moody." Taylor whispered. "Where is he?" But the other two occupants of the room ignored her.**

"I didn't hear you." Harry said.

"How'd you figure that out?" Moody asked.

"After everything I knew and heard about you I knew there was no way you would've joined Tommy." She told him.

**"You fired . . . What are you talking about. . . ?"**

**"I told you. Harry, Taylor ... I told you both. If there's one thing I hate more than any other, it's a Death Eater who walked free. They turned their backs on my master when he needed them most. I expected him to punish them. I expected him to torture them. Tell me he hurt them, Taylor. . . ." **

"I'm not telling you anything." She growled. Nikita and Harry tightened their grips.

**Moody's face was suddenly lit with an insane smile. "Tell me he told them that I, I alone remained faithful... prepared to risk everything to deliver to him the one thing he wanted above all... you two."**

"That's still creepy." Harry, Taylor and the Muggles all said.

**"You didn't... it - it can't be you. ..."**

"Harry." Ron said knowing that his best friend was still in denial.

**"Who put your names in the Goblet of Fire, under the name of different schools? I did. Who frightened off every person I thought might try to hurt you both or prevent you both from winning the tournament? I did. Who nudged Hagrid into showing you the dragons? I did. Who helped you Harry see the only way you could beat the dragon? I did. Your sister managed that one by herself."**

"I didn't have a plan though. I winged it." Taylor admitted leaning into Nikita. Everyone thought she had a plan for her dragon but she lied because she didn't want help from Moody, she wanted to know she could do it herself.

**Moody's magical eye had now left the door. It was fixed upon Taylor again. His lopsided mouth leered more widely than ever.**

Harry growled, he was extremely protective over Taylor when it came to anyone that wanted to date Taylor and people looking at her body.

**"It hasn't been easy, Harry, Taylor, guiding you two through these tasks without arousing suspicion. I have had to use every ounce of cunning I possess, so that my hand would not be detectable in your success. Dumbledore would have been very suspicious if you both had managed everything too easily. As long as you got into that maze, preferably with a decent head start - then, I knew, I would have a chance of getting rid of the other champions and leaving your way clear. But I also had to contend with both of your stupidity.**

"They are not stupid!" The Potter twins family yelled. The family from blood and all but blood.

"**The second task . . . that was when I was most afraid we would fail. I was keeping watch on you, Potters. I knew you both hadn't worked out the egg's clue, so I had to give you another hint -"**

"**You didn't," Harry said hoarsely. "Cedric gave me the clue -"**

**"Who told Cedric to open it underwater? I did. I trusted that he would pass the information on to you. Decent people are so easy to manipulate, Potters. I was sure Cedric would want to repay you for telling him about the dragons, and so he did. But even then, Potters, even then you seemed likely to fail. I was watching all the time ... all those hours in the library. Didn't you both realize that the book you needed was in your dormitory all along Harry? I planted it there early on, I gave it to the Longbottom boy, don't you remember? Magical Water Plants of the Mediterranean. It would have told you all you needed to know about Gillyweed. I expected you to ask everyone and anyone you could for help. Longbottom would have told you both in an instant. But you did not. . . you did not. . . You both have a streak of pride and independence that might have ruined all.**

"You get that from your parents." Sirius told them.

**"So what could I do? Feed you information from another innocent source. You told me at the Yule Ball, Harry, a house-elf called Dobby had given you and Taylor a Christmas present. I called the elf to the staffroom to collect some robes for cleaning. I staged a loud conversation with Professor McGonagall about the hostages who had been taken, and whether you two would think to use Gillyweed. And your little elf friend ran straight to Snape's office and then hurried to find you two..."**

**Moodys wand was pointing directly at Taylor's heart.**

"Why is it always you?" ¾ of the favourite four asked at the same time as Taylor muttered. "Why is it always me?"

**Over his shoulder, foggy shapes were moving in the Foe-Glass on the wall.**

**"You were so long in that lake, Potters, I thought you had drowned, I was worried that you, Taylor, had failed and your fear of being under water had gotten to you.**

"You're scared of water?" Lily asked.

"No I'm scared of my head being under the water. Vernon and Petunia liked to dunk me under and drown me." Taylor answered offhandedly.

**But luckily, Dumbledore took your idiocy for nobility, and marked you high for it. I breathed again.**

**"You had an easier time of it than you should have in that maze tonight and I must thank you for sticking together it made my job much easier, of course," said Moody. "I was patrolling around it, able to see through the outer hedges, able to curse many obstacles out of your way. I Stunned Fleur Delacour as she passed.**

Taylor's jaw clenched.

**I put the Imperius Curse on Krum, so that he would finish Diggory and leave your path to the cup clear."**

**The twins stared at Moody. Harry just didn't see how this could be. ... Dumbledore's friend, the famous Auror. . . the one who had caught so many Death Eaters ... It made no sense ... no sense at all. ... Taylor was trying to get her brain to start, the pain she was in was distracting her too much and she couldn't figure out what was going on, or how to get out of this situation alive.**

"Nice to know you were trying to get us out of there. I was still stuck at 'The hell is going on?!'" Harry said.

**The foggy shapes in the Foe-Glass were sharpening, had become more distinct. Taylor could see the outlines of three people over Moody's shoulder, moving closer and closer. But Moody wasn't watching them. His magical eye was upon Taylor.**

"It always was, now that I think about it whenever he looked at the twins his normal eye was on Harry and his magical one on Taylor. A lot." Hermione said as the twins shuddered.

**"The Dark Lord didn't manage to kill you. Potters, and he so wanted to,"**

"Actually he wanted Taylor to join him." George corrected.

**whispered Moody. "Imagine how he will reward me when he finds I have done it for him. I gave you to him -the thing he needed above all to regenerate - and then I killed you for him. I will be honoured beyond all other Death Eaters. I will be his dearest, his closest supporter . . . closer than a son. ..."**

"But he'd still Crucio you if you screwed up." The twins shrugged.

**Moody's normal eye was bulging, his eyes fixed upon the twins. The door was barred, and they knew they would never reach their own wands in time. . .**

"We really need holsters." Harry said and Taylor nodded.

**"The Dark Lord and I," said Moody, and he looked completely insane now, towering over the twins, leering down at them, "have much in common. Both of us, for instance, had very disappointing fathers . . . very disappointing indeed. Both of us suffered the indignity, of being named after those fathers. And both of us had the pleasure . . . the very great pleasure ... of killing our fathers to ensure the continued rise of the Dark Order!"**

**"You're mad," Taylor said - she couldn't stop herself-**

"Of course you couldn't." Michael said.

"Usually when someone is trying to kill you you don't try to piss them off." Amanda told the young girl who never seemed to get that hint. Taylor shrugged, they were going to try kill her anyway she might as well be herself and piss them off as much as she could before she croaked.

**"you're mad! You are actually certifiable insane!"**

"Well he is called _MAD_-Eye Moody." Tonks pointed out childishly.

**"Mad, am I?" said Moody, his voice rising uncontrollably. "We'll see! We'll see who's mad, now that the Dark Lord has returned, with me at his side! He is back, Harry and Taylor Potter, you did not conquer him - and now - I conquer you both!"**

"That sounds so wrong." The W twins muttered.

**Moody raised his wand, he opened his mouth; the twins plunged their own hands into their robes –**

**"Stupefy!" **

**There was a blinding flash of red light, and with a great splintering and crashing, the door of Moody's office was blasted apart -Moody was thrown backward onto the office floor. The twins, still staring at the place where Moody's face had been, saw Albus Dumbledore, Professor Snape, and Professor McGonagall looking back at them out of the Foe-Glass. They looked around and saw the three of them standing in the doorway, Dumbledore in front, his wand outstretched.**

"Thank you." The twins told their headmaster.

**At that moment, the twins fully understood for the first time why people said Dumbledore was the only wizard Voldemort had ever feared. The look upon Dumbledore's face as he stared down at the unconscious form of Mad-Eye Moody was more terrible than the twins could have ever imagined. There was no benign smile upon Dumbledore's face, no twinkle in the eyes behind the spectacles. There was cold fury in every line of the ancient face; a sense of power radiated from Dumbledore as though he were giving off burning heat.**

"I do not appreciate someone trying to kill my students." Dumbledore told them. He considered the twins as family, grandchildren, and when he figured it all out and that the twins were in danger _again_ he was angry, unbelievable so.

**He stepped into the office, placed a foot underneath Moody's unconscious body, and kicked him over onto his back, so that his face was visible. Snape followed him, looking into the Foe-Glass, where his own face was still visible, glaring into the room. Professor McGonagall went straight to the twins worry evident on her face.**

The twins smiled at their head of house. She felt the same for them as Dumbledore did. They were like her grandbabies, her little lion cubs and she hated that they were in danger.

**"Come along, Taylor, Harry," she whispered. The thin line of her mouth was twitching as though she was about to cry.**

No one judged her. Of course they wouldn't. The Order knew how McGonagall felt about the twins and how she was willing to protect them as well as all of her little cubs. They also knew that anyone who screwed with her lions cubs were going to get it as McGonagall was a lioness and she was fiercely protective.

**"Come along . . . hospital wing ..."**

**"No," said Dumbledore sharply.**

**"Dumbledore, they ought to - look at them - they've been through enough tonight -"**

**"They will stay, Minerva, because they need to understand," said Dumbledore curtly. "Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery. They need to know who has put them through the ordeal they have suffered tonight, and why,"**

**"Moody," Harry said. He was still in a state of complete disbelief. "How can it have been Moody?"**

"**That isn't Moody." Taylor whispered to her brother, so quietly only he heard.**

"You should've spoken louder Miss Potter." McGonagall said. She knew Taylor was smart and tried to hide it, the same with Harry she just didn't understand why.

**"This is not Alastor Moody," said Dumbledore quietly. "You have never known Alastor Moody. The real Moody would not have removed you both from my sight after what happened tonight. The moment he took you two, I knew - and I followed."**

"Took you some time." Sirius grumbled.

**Dumbledore bent down over Moody's limp form and put a hand inside his robes. He pulled out Moody's hip flask and a set of keys on a ring. Then he turned to Professors McGonagall and Snape.**

**"Severus, please fetch me the strongest Truth Potion you possess, and then go down to the kitchens and bring up the house-elf called Winky. Minerva, kindly go down to Hagrid's house, where you will find a large black dog sitting in the pumpkin patch. Take the dog up to my office, tell him I will be with him shortly, then come back here."**

**If either Snape or McGonagall found these instructions peculiar, they hid their confusion. Both turned at once and left the office. Dumbledore walked over to the trunk with seven locks, fitted the first key in the lock, and opened it. It contained a mass of spell-books. Dumbledore closed the trunk, placed a second key in the second lock, and opened the trunk again. The spellbooks had vanished; this time it contained an assortment of broken Sneako-scopes, some parchment and quills, and what looked like a silvery Invisibility Cloak. The twins watched, astounded, as Dumbledore placed the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth keys in their respective locks, reopening the trunk each time, and revealing different contents each time. Then he placed the seventh key in the lock, threw open the lid, and Harry let out a cry of amazement.**

"Why didn't you?" Nikita asked Taylor.

"Wasn't paying attention to some magic trunk no matter who it had in it. My leg was killing me and I was too focused on trying to stay upright." She answered.

**The twins were looking down into a kind of pit, an underground room, and lying on the floor some ten feet below, apparently fast asleep, thin and starved in appearance, was the real Mad-Eye Moody. His wooden leg was gone, the socket that should have held the magical eye looked empty beneath its lid, and chunks of his grizzled hair were missing. The twins stared, thunderstruck, between the sleeping Moody in the trunk and the unconscious Moody lying on the floor of the office.**

"**Polyjuice." Taylor muttered inaudibly.**

"I still can't believe you made that in your second year." Richard said not realising that he'd put his foot in his mouth.

"We'll explain later." Hermione said quickly.

"Or Kate can show the memory." Ron added.

**Dumbledore climbed into the trunk, lowered himself, and fell lightly onto the floor beside the sleeping Moody. He bent over him.**

**"Stunned - controlled by the Imperius Curse - very weak," he said. "Of course, they would have needed to keep him alive. Harry, throw down the imposter's cloak - he's freezing. Madam Pomfrey will need to see him, but he seems in no immediate danger."**

**Harry did as he was told; Dumbledore covered Moody in the cloak, tucked it around him, and clambered out of the trunk again. Then he picked up the hip flask that stood upon the desk, unscrewed it, and turned it over. A thick glutinous liquid splattered onto the office floor.**

**"Polyjuice Potion, Harry, Taylor,"**

"But I see you got there before me." Dumbledore said.

**said Dumbledore. "You see the simplicity of it, and the brilliance. For Moody never does drink except from his hip flask, he's well known for it. The imposter needed, of course, to keep the real Moody close by, so that he could continue making the potion. You see his hair ..." Dumbledore looked down on the Moody in the trunk. "The imposter has been cutting it off all year, see where it is uneven?**

"**But I think, in the excitement of tonight, our fake Moody might have forgotten to take it as frequendy as he should have done ... on the hour . . . every hour. . . . We shall see." Dumbledore pulled out the chair at the desk and sat down upon it, his eyes fixed upon the unconscious Moody on the floor. The twins stared at him too. Minutes passed in silence... .**

"And pain." The twins said.

**Then, before their very eyes, the face of the man on the floor began to change. The scars were disappearing, the skin was becoming smooth; the mangled nose became whole and started to shrink. The long mane of grizzled grey hair was withdrawing into the scalp and turning the colour of straw. Suddenly, with a loud clunk, the wooden leg fell away as a normal leg regrew in its place; next moment, the magical eyeball had popped out of the man's face as a real eye replaced it; it rolled away across the floor and continued to swivel in every direction.**

**The twins saw a man lying before them, pale-skinned, slightly freckled, with a mop of fair hair. They knew who he was. They had seen him in Dumbledore's Pensieve, had watched him being led away from court by the dementors, trying to convince Mr. Crouch that he was innocent. . . but he was lined around the eyes now and looked much older. . . .**

**There were hurried footsteps outside in the corridor. Snape had returned with Winky at his heels. Professor McGonagall was right behind them.**

**"Crouch!" Snape said, stopping dead in the doorway. "Barty Crouch!"**

**"Good heavens," said Professor McGonagall, stopping dead and staring down at the man on the floor.**

"Never a dull moment since you two came to Hogwarts." Flitwick said.

**Filthy, disheveled, Winky peered around Snape's legs. Her mouth opened wide and she let out a piercing shriek.**

**"Master Barty, Master Barty, what is you doing here?" She flung herself forward onto the young man's chest. "You is killed him! You is killed him! You is killed Master's son!"**

**"He is simply Stunned, Winky," said Dumbledore. "Step aside, please. Severus, you have the potion?"**

**Snape handed Dumbledore a small glass bottle of completely clear liquid: the Veritaserum with which he had threatened the twins with in class. Dumbledore got up, bent over the man on the floor, and pulled him into a sitting position against the wall beneath the Foe-Glass, in which the reflections of Dumbledore, Snape, and McGonagall were still glaring down upon them all. Winky remained on her knees, trembling, her hands over her face. Dumbledore forced the mans mouth open and poured three drops inside it. Then he pointed his wand at the mans chest and said, "Ennervate."**

**Crouch's son opened his eyes. His face was slack, his gaze unfocused. Dumbledore knelt before him, so that their faces were level.**

**"Can you hear me?" Dumbledore asked quietly.**

**The man's eyelids flickered. "Yes," he muttered.**

**"I would like you to tell us," said Dumbledore softly, "how you came to be here. How did you escape from Azkaban?"**

**Crouch took a deep, shuddering breath, then began to speak in a flat, expressionless voice.**

Amelia turned a page in her notebook and got ready to write down everything that was said.

**My mother saved me. She knew she was dying. She persuaded my father to rescue me as a last favor to her. He loved her as he had never loved me. He agreed. They came to visit me. They gave me a draft of Polyjuice Potion containing one of my mother's hairs. She took a draft of Polyjuice Potion containing one of my hairs. We took on each other's appearance."**

**Winky was shaking her head, trembling. "Say no more. Master Barty, say no more, you is getting your father into trouble!"**

**But Crouch took another deep breath and continued in the same flat voice. "The dementors are blind. They sensed one healthy, one dying person entering Azkaban. They sensed one healthy, one dying person leaving it. My father smuggled me out, disguised as my mother, in case any prisoners were watching through their doors. My mother died a short while afterward in Azkaban. She was careful to drink Polyjuice Potion until the end. She was buried under my name and bearing my appearance. Everyone believed her to be me."**

Amelia was writing furiously.

**The man's eyelids flickered.**

**"And what did your father do with you, when he had got you home?" said Dumbledore quietly.**

**"Staged my mother's death. A quiet, private funeral. That grave is empty. The house-elf nursed me back to health. Then I had to be concealed. I had to be controlled. My father had to use a number of spells to subdue me. When I had recovered my strength, I thought only of finding my master . . . of returning to his service."**

"Moron." Richard said.

**"How did your father subdue you?" said Dumbledore.**

**"The Imperius Curse," Moody said. "I was under my fathers control. I was forced to wear an Invisibility Cloak day and night. I was always with the house-elf. She was my keeper and caretaker. She pitied me. She persuaded my father to give me occasional treats. Rewards for my good behavior."**

**"Master Barty, Master Barty," sobbed Winky through her hands. "You isn't ought to tell them, we is getting in trouble. ..."**

"Poor Winky." Hermione said.

**"Did anybody ever discover that you were still alive?" said Dumbledore softly. "Did anyone know except your father and the house-elf?"**

**"Yes," said Crouch, his eyelids flickering again. "A witch in my father's office. Bertha Jorkins. She came to the house with papers for my father s signature. He was not at home. Winky showed her inside and returned to the kitchen, to me. But Bertha Jorkins heard Winky talking to me. She came to investigate. She heard enough to guess who was hiding under the Invisibility Cloak. My father arrived home. She confronted him. He put a very powerful Memory Charm on her to make her forget what she'd found out. Too powerful. He said it damaged her memory permanently."**

"And it got her killed!" Taylor stated angrily.

**"Why is she coming to nose into my masters private business?" sobbed Winky. "Why isn't she leaving us be?"**

**"Tell me about the Quidditch World Cup," said Dumbledore.**

**"Winky talked my father into it," said Crouch, still in the same monotonous voice. "She spent months persuading him. I had not left the house for years. I had loved Quidditch. Let him go, she said. He will be in his Invisibility Cloak. He can watch. Let him smell fresh air for once. She said my mother would have wanted it. She told my father that my mother had died to give me freedom. She had not saved me for a life of imprisonment. He agreed in the end.**

**"It was carefully planned. My father led me and Winky up to the Top Box early in the day. Winky was to say that she was saving a seat for my father. I was to sit there, invisible. When everyone had left the box, we would emerge. Winky would appear to be alone. Nobody would ever know.**

**"But Winky didn't know that I was growing stronger. I was starting to fight my father's Imperius Curse. There were times when I was almost myself again. There were brief periods when I seemed outside his control. It happened, there, in the Top Box. It was like waking from a deep sleep. I found myself out in public, in the middle of the match, and I saw, in front of me, a wand sticking out of a boys pocket. I had not been allowed a wand since before Azkaban. I stole it. Winky didn't know. Winky is frightened of heights. She had her face hidden."**

Harry looked down guiltily. "I'm getting you two a holster." Moody told them. They nodded their thanks.

**"Master Barty, you bad boy!" whispered Winky, tears trickling between her fingers.**

**"So you took the wand," said Dumbledore, "and what did you do with it?"**

**"We went back to the tent," said Crouch. "Then we heard them. We heard the Death Eaters. The ones who had never been to Azkaban. The ones who had never suffered for my master. They had turned their backs on him. They were not enslaved, as I was. They were free to seek him, but they did not. They were merely making sport of Muggles. The sound of their voices awoke me. My mind was clearer than it had been in years. I was angry. I had the wand.**

"**I wanted to attack them for their disloyalty to my master. My father had left the tent; he had gone to free the Muggles. Winky was afraid to see me so angry. She used her own brand of magic to bind me to her. She pulled me from the tent, pulled me into the forest, away from the Death Eaters. I tried to hold her back. I wanted to return to the campsite. I wanted to show those Death Eaters what loyalty to the Dark Lord meant, and to punish them for their lack of it. I used the stolen wand to cast the Dark Mark into the sky.**

"And creeped the hell out of a few teenagers." Fred said. Our favourite four nodded.

**"Ministry wizards arrived. They shot Stunning Spells everywhere. One of the spells came through the trees where Winky and I stood. The bond connecting us was broken. We were both Stunned. When Winky was discovered, my father knew I must be nearby. He searched the bushes where she had been found and felt me lying there. He waited until the other Ministry members had left the forest. He put me back under the Imperius Curse and took me home. He dismissed Winky. She had failed him. She had let me acquire a wand. She had almost let me escape."**

"It wasn't her fault." Hermione shouted.

**W****inky let out a wail of despair.**

**"Now it was just Father and I, alone in the house. And then . . . and then . . ." Crouch's head rolled on his neck, and an insane grin spread across his face. "My master came for me. He arrived at our house late one night in the arms of his servant Wormtail. My master had found out that I was still alive. He had captured Bertha Jorkins in Albania. He had tortured her. She told him a great deal. She told him about the Triwizard Tournament.**

"**She told him the old Auror, Moody, was going to teach at Hogwarts. He tortured her until he broke through the Memory Charm my father had placed upon her. She told him I had escaped from Azkaban. She told him my father kept me imprisoned to prevent me from seeking my master. And so my master knew that I was still his faithful servant - perhaps the most faithful of all. My master conceived a plan, based upon the information Bertha had given him. He needed me. He arrived at our house near midnight. My father answered the door."**

**The smile spread wider over Crouch's face, as though recalling the sweetest memory of his life. Winky's petrified brown eyes were visible through her fingers. She seemed too appalled to speak.**

**"It was very quick. My father was placed under the Imperius Curse by my master. Now my father was the one imprisoned, controlled. My master forced him to go about his business as usual, to act as though nothing was wrong. And I was released. I awoke. I was myself again, alive as I hadn't been in years.**

Amelia was furious, how had the Crouch's got away with this?

**"And what did Lord Voldemort ask you to do?" said Dumbledore.**

**"He asked me whether I was ready to risk everything for him. I was ready. It was my dream, my greatest ambition, to serve him, to prove myself to him. He told me he needed to place a faithful servant at Hogwarts. A servant who would guide Taylor and Harry Potter through the Triwizard Tournament without appearing to do so. A servant who would watch over the Potter twins. Ensure they reached the Triwizard Cup. Turn the cup into a Portkey, which would take the first person to touch it to my master. But first -"**

**"You needed Alastor Moody," said Dumbledore. His blue eyes were blazing, though his voice remained calm.**

**"Wormtail and I did it. We had prepared the Polyjuice Potion beforehand. We journeyed to his house. Moody put up a struggle.**

"Of course I did." Moody growled.

**There was a commotion. We managed to subdue him just in time. Forced him into a compartment of his own magical trunk. Took some of his hair and added it to the potion. I drank it; I became Moody's double. I took his leg and his eye. I was ready to face Arthur Weasley when he arrived to sort out the Muggles who had heard a disturbance. I made the dustbins move around the yard. I told Arthur Weasley I had heard intruders in my yard, who had set off the dustbins. Then I packed up Moody's clothes and Dark detectors, put them in the trunk with Moody, and set off for Hogwarts. I kept him alive, under the Imperius Curse. I wanted to be able to question him. To find out about his past, learn his habits, so that I could fool even Dumbledore.**

"Sadly it worked." Dumbledore said gravely.

"**I also needed his hair to make the Polyjuice Potion. The other ingredients were easy. I stole boom-slang skin from the dungeons. When the Potions master found me in his office, I said I was under orders to search it."**

Snape growled.

**"And what became of Wormtail after you attacked Moody?" said Dumbledore.**

**"Wormtail returned to care for my master, in my father's house, and to keep watch over my father."**

**"But your father escaped," said Dumbledore.**

**"Yes. After a while he began to fight the Imperius Curse just as I had done. There were periods when he knew what was happening. My master decided it was no longer safe for my father to leave the house. He forced him to send letters to the Ministry instead. He made him write and say he was ill. But Wormtail neglected his duty. He was not watchful enough. My father escaped. My master guessed that he was heading for Hogwarts. My father was going to tell Dumbledore everything, to confess. He was going to admit that he had smuggled me from Azkaban.**

"At least he tried to make it better." Alex huffed.

**"My master sent me word of my father's escape. He told me to stop him at all costs. So I waited and watched. I used the map I had taken from Harry Potter. The map that had almost ruined everything."**

**"Map?" said Dumbledore quickly. "What map is this?"**

**"The Potter's map of Hogwarts. They saw me on it. They saw me stealing more ingredients for the Polyjuice Potion from Snape's office one night. They thought I was my father. We have the same first name. I took the map from the Potters that night, although the girl clearly did not want me to have it.**

Taylor blushed whilst Harry nudged her shoulder. "Shoulda listened to you."

**I told them my father hated Dark wizards. They believed my father was after Snape.**

"Sorry." They both said.

**"For a week I waited for my father to arrive at Hogwarts. At last, one evening, the map showed my father entering the grounds. I pulled on my Invisibility Cloak and went down to meet him. He was walking around the edge of the forest. Then the Potters came, and Krum. I waited. I could not hurt the Potters; my master needed them. The boy ran to get Dumbledore. I made noise a little further away and the girl went to investigate. I Stunned Krum. I killed my father."**

"Bastard." People shouted angrily.

**"Noooo!" wailed Winky. "Master Barty, Master Barty, what is you saying?"**

**"You killed your father," Dumbledore said, in the same soft voice. "What did you do with the body?"**

**"Carried it into the forest. Covered it with the Invisibility Cloak. I had the map with me. I watched Potter run into the castle. He met Snape. Dumbledore joined them. I watched Potter bringing Dumbledore out of the castle. I walked back out of the forest, doubled around behind them, went to meet them. I told Dumbledore Snape had told me where to come. I watched you meet up with the girl.**

"I should've looked around. Tried to find him." Taylor sighed.

**"Dumbledore told me to go and look for my father. I went back to my father's body. Watched the map. When everyone was gone, I Transfigured my father's body. He became a bone ... I buried it, while wearing the Invisibility Cloak, in the freshly dug earth in front of Hagrid's cabin."**

"Oh Barty." Amelia moaned.

**There was complete silence now, except for Winky's continued sobs. Then Dumbledore said, "And tonight. . ."**

**"I offered to carry the Triwizard Cup into the maze before dinner," whispered Barty Crouch. "Turned it into a Portkey. My master's plan worked. He is returned to power and I will be honoured by him beyond the dreams of wizards."**

**The insane smile lit his features once more, and his head drooped onto his shoulder as Winky wailed and sobbed at his side.**

Amanda shook her head. "Can you two promise to have a quiet year this year? I don't think my heart could take anymore."

"Sorry." The twins mumbled.

"Come on everyone, off to bed." As soon as Dumbledore said this a letter appeared.

_Hey everyone, _

_We did some modifying to the house so that everyone can sleep. For starters if you're married your sharing a room with your significant other of course. Your names are on the door leading to your room. Everyone else your split into two huge rooms. Boys and Girls of course._

_Goodnight everyone,_

_Kate Beckett._

Everyone nodded at this information and dragged themselves to their new rooms.

**A/N: Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Don't forget to review.**


	10. Early morning talks

**A/N: We get some Fleur and Taylor in this chapter! Hope y'all like it.**

**Disclaimer: I only own my OC's.**

Fleur glanced over at Taylors bed, she wasn't in it. The bed was made but the quilt was ruffled as if the younger girl had just sat on it and waited for everyone else to fall asleep before making her escape. Getting out of bed Fleur put on some clothes and headed out of the room in search of Taylor, she decided to look in the kitchen first.

The light in the kitchen was on so someone was in there. Fleur hoped it was Taylor.

"Harry." She said as she saw the young raven haired wizard sat holding a steaming mug.

"Fleur." He replied nodding at her. "Looking for Taylor?" He asked knowingly.

She nodded. "What are you doing up?" She asked.

"Nightmare, same as Tay."

Fleur paled, she really had to find the red-headed teen now, she had to make sure she was okay. Harry noticed the French witch pale and smiled at her.

"Tay can handle her nightmares, Fleur. We both can, we've been having them our whole lives." Harry informed her, this didn't make Fleur feel any better. "You like her." Harry said.

Fleur looked up at him shocked as she sat down on the chair nearest to him, she nodded. "I do, but I'm not the one she likes." Fleur admitted sadly.

Harry laughed. "What do you mean, Tay likes you."

"Not like that. Taylor, Taylor likes your friend Nikita. I saw how close they were, the hand holding, cheek kissing, hugs, all things you have in a relationship."

Harry was really laughing now. "Fleur I'm going to be straight with you. Me and Tay we've had a shit life and the gang were all we had at one point. They helped us through so much and we got attached to all of them. Some more than others, I'm closest to Alex and Tay is closest to Niki, the gang are like family to us, brothers and sisters, that's it. Niki was the one who held Tay every time she woke up screaming, Niki pretty much saved her life, they love each other but they're not in love with each other. Tay likes you Fleur, but she thinks she too fucked up to even stand a chance with you. She's trying to protect you as well, a lot of people want us dead she thinks by ignoring her feelings towards you she's protecting you and herself, Tay's not one for wearing her heart on her sleeve. What she doesn't get is that she's just hurting you both."

Fleur was floored, that was possibly the most she'd ever heard Harry say and it was exactly what she wanted to hear. Her mouth hung open as Harry stared at her amusement clear on his face.

"She's on the roof, she's always on the roof." Harry told her. Fleur thanked him before rushing out of the kitchen and making her way to the rooftop. When she reached the top floor she sighed to herself as she realised she was going to have to climb out of the open window. Thankful that she put on clothes she struggled out of the window to the roof.

Taylor was sat with her back towards Fleur sat in her own little world, her thoughts running rampant. Stupid nightmares, she can't even remember the last time she slept for more than an hour and it's been three days since she's had any sleep.

"Taylor." Fleur calls making Taylor jump. "Are you okay?" Taylor nods quickly wiping the remnants of her tears of her face. Fleur sits down next to her and sees her red, puffy eyes and it makes her heart-break. "You know you can always talk to me, you don't have to be strong."

"I do." Taylor admitted softly. "It's the price of being The-Girl-Who-Lived, everyone wants their heroine to be strong, unbreakable, the one who knows what to do not someone who can't handle what goes bump in the dark."

"Sounds exhausting." Fleur muttered.

"It is."

"I think the strongest thing you could do is ask for help." Fleur continued. "I don't want the big strong Girl-That-Lived, I don't want the fake Taylor who hides how she's really feeling because she thinks she has to be strong. I want you, I want to get to know Taylor Potter not Taylor Potter Whatever-Hyphenated-Name-People-Have-Decided-To-Give-Her." Fleur took a hold of Taylors hand and immediately the younger girl was comforted, as if this was what she had needed her whole life.

"You don't want me." Taylor whispered. "I'm scarred and broken, destined to die."

Tears filled Fleur's eyes. "I don't care and you know that." They'd had this conversation before when they had just started their friendship Taylor had told Fleur that she wouldn't want to be her friend she was broken and just got into trouble and nearly got people killed a lot.

"I still don't understand how you could like me." Taylor stated.

"Do you want the whole list or just the cliff notes version." Fleur joked.

Taylor shrugged and leaned further into the Veela resting her head on the older girls shoulder.

"Okay I'll list a few reasons. One; you're the least judgemental person I know, two; you're incredibly kind, three; no matter what life has thrown at you you've come out on top, four; you're saving people thing, five; you're absolutely stunning, six; you stand up for the little people, seven; even when the only thing you want to do is break down you refuse, you always act tough, eight; you make the most adorable face when you're concentrating, nine; you refuse to quit and ten; you put everyone else before yourself. I could go on and on about why I like you but it would take too long." Fleur smiled.

Taylor let out a watery chuckle that sounded more like a sob. "I don't know what you want from me. I can't give you anything, I don't have anything, I can't even give you a promise not to leave."

"I don't want anything of off you, I just want you. Taylor, I like you a lot."

"You shouldn't. It'll just get you killed. You should find someone else, anyone else"

"I don't want anyone else." Fleur protested.

"I die!" Taylor finally exploded, she couldn't pretend that her death wasn't bothering her anymore. "I don't even hit twenty! I spend most of my future being tortured! You shouldn't want me, you shouldn't because you'll just get hurt! I'll just be ripped away from you!"

Fleur pulled the now crying teen into her side, hugging her tightly. "Oh ma chérie (my darling)." Fleur sighed sadly. "We can stop all of that from happening you silly girl, why didn't you tell me this was upsetting you so?"

"What if we can't stop it Fleur? What if I die? My luck will run out soon, how am I going to survive this war?"

Fleur didn't know how to answer this, of course she couldn't promise that Taylor would make it out of this war alive no matter how much she wanted to.

"What if you don't survive? What if I let this happen and stop lying to myself and then someone kills you? How am I supposed to handle that?"

"I would rather get into a relationship with you and let what comes come than not and possibly lose you." Fleur told the young girl, who looked and sounded so lost.

Taylor sat silently now lost in thoughts.

"Sing for me?" Fleur asked after they had been silent for ten minutes.

"What?"

"Sing for me." Fleur repeated waving her wand and transfiguring a stick that was on the roof into a guitar. "Please." The French witch pouted.

Taylor sighed and took the guitar and began to strum it softly.

"I know I've got my problems and it starts with me," She began to sing quietly, "She saw something inside that I can't see and late at night, yeah she'll comfort me. Hold onto me, hold onto me. I got a nervous habit and I drink too much, she said she hates her life and wants to change her ways. She wakes in the night and whispers oh so quiet. Hold onto me, hold onto me. Don't you ever leave, don't you ever leave. I know I got my problems and it's probably me. So hold onto me, hold onto me."

Fleur smiled at the song. Taylor continued to strum on the guitar with her eyes closed lost in her own little world.

"I stay up to late and it hurts to breathe. Said it's four a.m. girl go back to sleep and sometimes at night I can hear her dreams. Come rescue me, come rescue me. Don't you ever leave, don't you ever leave. I know we got our problems and it's probably me. So hold onto me, hold onto me. I'm a drifters body in an open sea, and I've seen my reflection staring right back at me. With no place to go and you're left all alone, there's no place like home. Hold onto me, hold onto me. Just stay with me, just stay with me. I know we've got our problems and you'll probably leave. So hold onto me, hold onto me. I could never leave, I will never leave. So hold onto me, hold onto me."

Taylor finished the song but kept her eyes closed.

"That was beautiful." Fleur whispered desperately not wanting to break the mood that surrounded the two. Taylor opened her eyes and looked directly into Fleur's, Killing curse green into Cobalt blue, as if she was searching for something. Fleur didn't blink, she wanted Taylor to find whatever it was she was looking for. After what seemed like an eternity but was really no time at all Taylor seemed to have found it, and slowly, agonisingly slowly, she moved her face towards Fleur.

Their lips touched. It was Taylors first willing kiss, the only kiss she had willingly given to anyone. It wasn't perfect or passionate, they just stayed that way, their lips pressed together. This kiss was more of a promise, they would do what Fleur said, follow their emotions and let what comes come. And they would fight it all, but they would fight it together, they wouldn't hide from one another and Taylor didn't have to act strong around her. This kiss was a soft, gentle promise and it promised a lot more kisses like this one and so much more. This kiss was a promise of love even if the two girls were too afraid to use those words yet.

They pulled apart smiling. The roof was now Fleur's favourite place, she understood why Taylor liked it so much, they stayed holding onto each other in companionable silence and watched as the sun rose signalling another day, but this day and the rest after were going to be so much nicer than before. They finally had each other, and as they watched that sun rise, that was all that mattered.

**A/N: I honestly wasn't planning on having them kiss yet but I was writing and it just fit. The song used was by Mayday Parade, it's called Hold Onto Me from their album Monsters In The Closet. Don't forget to leave me a review!**


	11. More Talks

**A/N: Hi all! Glad you all like the conversation between Fleur and Taylor! This chapter were going to have another lovely talk between… Harry & Taylor and Harry & Tonks! Wooh! Hope you enjoy it.**

**Disclaimer: I only own my OC's and even then I've stolen the names from other tv shows!**

Harry and Taylor didn't even attempt to sleep, they haven't attempted to sleep for a while now, both of them just waited for everyone else in their rooms to fall asleep before leaving their rooms. Nightmares affect the both of them, horrific flashes of their lives. Beatings from the Dursleys, Vernon coming into their room late at night, being kidnapped, their slavery, Cedric dying, their torture, their mum and dad dying, some damn corridor and that was only the half of it. Clips of these moments hit them whilst they're awake as well. There was literally no escape for the twins and now, not only do they have to suffer through the memories Kate was sending but all of their friends do as well, and they had worked so hard to keep it from them.

Sometimes when Harry and Taylor meet up late at night they're silent, other times they cry and sometimes they have their most meaningful talks at stupid-o'clock in the morning. These meetings giving them both the strength to carry on and face the next day, giving them the courage to pretend to be fine the next day. If it weren't for these meetings then the twins definitely wouldn't be able to continue as they are and even with them it was hard.

"Hot chocolate." Harry says handing Taylor a steaming mug.

Taylor nods her thanks.

"And a cigarette." He passes her a lit menthol cigarette. They were on the balcony Sirius showed them their first night here. Where they met every night to steal comfort from one another before going their separate ways to work through their thoughts. Harry always ended up in the kitchen and Taylor on the roof. Taylor puts the cigarette to her ruby red lips and slowly takes a large drag before exhaling and smiling. The twins didn't class themselves as avid smokers, once or twice a week they needed a couple because it was less dangerous then there alternative. The twins started smoking when they were twelve because the cravings from the drugs their kidnapper used on them was too hard and sometimes they felt like they couldn't breathe because of it, so they found cigarettes and it made the cravings go away, they were still there just more controlled, easier to ignore.

"You okay?" Taylor asks Harry. It was a loaded question and she knew it, not as loaded as 'How are you?' but loaded enough.

Harry doesn't answer immediately, choosing instead to take a long drag from his own cigarette. Taylor raised her eyebrow at him as she watched him out of the corner of her eye.

"Yeah." He lied easily, knowing it wouldn't work on his sister. Her eyebrow raised further so he continued, "I've felt worse but then I've also felt better."

"That was a very diplomatic answer." Taylor said still only looking at him from the corner of her eye, keeping herself positioned looking away from the house. "And you are going to elaborate if you know what is good for you." She threatened.

Harry let out a small chuckle, puffing away on his cigarette. "Okay. I'm feeling a lot better than I was a couple of weeks back or even yesterday, I think I'm starting to get better. Seeing the others helped a lot, and seeing our mum and dad but I've got a ways to go. It's not an instant thing, being fixed." Taylor nodded, they both knew this through experience.

"How about you?" Harry asked.

"I- I don't know." She shrugged. "I honestly don't know." Taylor exhaled the smoke that built up in her mouth.

"It's okay." Harry comforted laying his head on her shoulder. They had finished their cigarettes and hot chocolates by the time Harry spoke up again. "Would you like to talk about Fleur?" He asked quietly.

Taylor shot away from him quickly and went to the other side of the balcony. "There's nothing to talk about." She told him.

"Really? So you don't want to talk about how you like her but think you're too screwed up for her?"

"No." She answered shortly. Harry sighed, he knew when his sister got like this only Nikita, Amanda or lately Fleur could talk to her.

"Okay." He admitted defeat. "I'm going to the kitchen 'kay?"

Taylor nodded. "Roof." She told him. "Love ya Har."

Harry smiled at the most important person in his life. "Me and you Tay, me and you are gonna make it through this." He promised before kissing her cheek and walking away with the now empty mugs.

~o0o~

"Harry?" A soft voice questioned. Harry who had his back to the door whilst he busied himself making a coffee whirled around quickly to see a bleary-eyed, pink-haired Metamorphagus.

"Yeah. Want one?" He asked motioning to the coffee.

"Please." She answered with a small smile. "Harry have you slept at all?"

Harry chuckled and handed her a coffee of her own. "No Tonks I haven't slept. Why are you up?"

"Couldn't sleep." She answered shifting in the chair she sat in.

"Nightmare?" He asked.

"How did you know?"

"Me and Tay have enough to notice the signs. Wanna talk about it?"

"It's nothing, it's stupid really."

"Not if it bothered you so much you can't sleep." Harry told her softly. Tonks couldn't keep herself from thinking if he carried on being so understanding she was going to end up snuggling close and falling asleep at the kitchen table.

"Just a nightmare about what happened in the graveyard. How do you and Taylor cope? You lived it, witnessed it and here I am and all I did was listen and I'm having nightmares because of it."

Harry, who may have grown up surrounded by girls still couldn't handle it if they cried, probably because the women in his life never really cried, they didn't like showing weakness. Even with all of that Harry sort of knew what to do. Really should've paid attention to Mike and Rick when they taught me all of this, Harry thought to himself. He moved his chair closer to Tonks and hugged her.

"It's over." He whispered in her ear. "It's done, me and Tay aren't there anymore. That's how we deal with it, how we're attempting to deal with it." He quickly corrected himself. Harry pulled back and stared into Tonks' eyes. Green into watery Violet. "And you don't need to have those nightmares because you will never be in a situation like that. He will never get you like he got us. I promise."

Tonks gave a watery chuckle. "The nightmare didn't have me in it Hero." She told him. "Two teens being tortured and it being describe in such detail kind of affects you."

Harry leaned back and gave her a huge Potter grin. "Well if that's the case and you're worried about me and Tay you needn't bother." He casual drank some coffee. "We're the Potter twins awesomeness is in our nature, we can survive anything."

Tonks nudged his shoulder. "You're a cocky little hero." She joked. "How did you manage it though? The rumours I've heard about you and Taylor, how did you manage to do it all? Were you not scared?"

"Of course I was scared." He told her. "I was terrified but if I stopped, let my fear take control… well we wouldn't be having this conversation right now."

"That's another thing how do you two just talk about your deaths like it's nothing?"

Harry shrugged and had to think about his answer for a moment. "Death is a natural occurrence, it's a part of life, so it's not really anything to worry about is it?"

"I suppose so, but most people don't joke about a Dark Lord trying to kill them, or wind him up." Tonks pointed out.

Harry laughed. "We're not most people Tonks. He's been trying to kill us ever since we came back into the Wizarding World, if we don't joke about it then it's going to screw with us."

Tonks couldn't help but laugh. "That makes sense in some weird sort of way Hero."

"I'm no hero Tonks."

"That's exactly what a hero would say, Hero." She winked at him. "I'm going back to bed. You should too Hero." With that Tonks stood up, kissed him on the cheek (although it was closer to his lips) and left the kitchen. Harry sat in a daze with a stupid grin on his face thinking about a now purple-haired young Auror who was by now tucked in bed and how her lips felt on him.

**A/N: I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Leave a review and tell me what you thought! :D**


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